Whirlpool Sky
by Skysaber
Summary: Self-Insert characters have potential to be enormously powerful because they enter the situation already knowing of the important secrets, events and people. But what if someone were to insert into a ninja world gone massively AU where NONE of that was true?
1. Chapter 1

Whirlpool Sky  
by Skysaber

Chapter One

OoOoO

It all started with a whisper by a dying Uzumaki who was staring out over his devastated homeland, ruined by yet another rampaging Uchiha.

"I wish my clan had never allied with your village."

On a dimension far beyond mortal reckoning, an observing power answered "DONE!"

And history got rewritten in a single stroke.

OoOoO

The sensation of warmth and floating was a comforting one. Not quite hot enough for a hot bath or sauna, yet it never cooled either, somehow managing to always stay right at that elusive temperature that never got either too much or too little heat, something so relaxing that you felt you could stay in it forever.

~Whoever came up with this could market it for a mint,~ the superspy thought.

Then the squeezing started.

~Then again?!~

OoOoO

Birth gets disorienting for those not prepared for it. The pink light you've always been used to until then grows darker as you pass through the circle of bone that is the standard pelvis, and then suddenly you're out and flopping around because, quite frankly, you've got the worst muscle tone you're ever going to have in your entire life. Period.

As he was swung around in the room, flipped upside down then rightside up in a chamber that seemed to spin around as various grown-ups handled him, Jared Saotome, Interdimensional Superspy Adventurer and currently a naked baby, caught a glimpse of a blonde woman sprawled out on the birthing table, and his first thought in life was, ~So that's my mother.~

A second's consideration followed that with, ~I can live with that.~

OoOoO

The newborn superspy was asleep minutes after first entering this world.

The thing about babies is they sleep, and they sleep a LOT! The adult part of Jared's mind was convinced this was a kindness to the parents, as the experience of giving birth is hard on everybody involved and there needs to be some rest and recuperation afterwards.

That the baby is mostly a sleeping bundle of softness during this immediate period gives the new parents a chance to catch a second wind for a bit. Having been in that job himself he knew it never felt like quite enough rest, but it did make it possible.

Still hard, but possible.

The superspy awoke to find himself eating.

However, he never woke up *quite* enough that time to realize that it wasn't a bottle.

OoOoO

The trip home from the hospital the next morning came in something of a blur, not because his eyes didn't work or something like that. No, Jared could now personally debunk those theories that said babies eyes weren't developed enough to see at first. His eyesight was sharper than ever, leaving him with no choice but to side with some competing studies and scientific research saying that when you are born your senses are as good as they are ever going to get, and that for the rest of your life you will never see, or hear, smell, taste or feel as well as you did just after you were born, that every year after that your senses get subtly diminished capacity to a greater or lesser extent.

Considering how every sight, sound and texture was felt in crystal clarity, almost to the point of hyper-reality, he was left with no choice but to agree with those studies.

Meh, the 'blind babies' theory was funded by the abortion lobby anyway.

Anyway, the diminutive spy got stirred half-awake in his blue-blanketed hospital crib due to the sensation of being picked up gently by giant hands. There was also an itching sensation he had all over that would have concerned him deeply if he weren't so tired that he couldn't focus on anything. But it was that some nurse or other had him that woke him up. ~Hmm, blue hair and glasses. No name tag. Too bad, otherwise it could be fun to freak her out in a few years by seeking her out and remembering her name.~

From the arms of the nurse who'd carried him out of the hospital room with all of the babies in it (Jared counted thirteen evenly split between blue and pink blankets in the brief glimpse he got before all he saw was the nurse's shoulder) he got carried to another room and presented to his blonde-haired mother.

Seeing her in a wheelchair caused a moment of concern for her until he realized that it was a common practice among hospitals, no matter the world, to wheel patients out the front door regardless of how mobile they were. And, come to think of it, his poor mom's hips would be rather sore right now, all things considered.

That concern laid to rest, Jared spent a moment memorizing his mother's features, figuring he might as well get used to her face, as they were going to spend a lot of time together in the coming years as he grew up.

Then he caught sight of her adjusting her top.

Oh dear.

Lunch.

~How embarrassing!~

The newborn would have then learned a whole new lesson on humiliation when he got changed immediately afterward, but he'd already fallen back into a deep sleep.

OoOoO

You don't truly understand weakness until you are a baby. Between the twenty or so hours of sleep you need per day, there is also the sensation of being a wet noodle. Your head feels like it weighs as much as the whole Earth, your constitution is shot, your limbs have all of the strength and coordination of wet snot, and something as simple as drinking your fill exhausts you utterly.

The reason the trip home was a blur was that he slept through most of it. He came awake, really awake, for the first time since being born really the next morning. He could remember being half awake, not-awake and dreaming, but he opened his eyes his first real time in this world to find the early sunlight streaming in between thin white curtains on an open window high over his crib in a room painted soft blue.

Baby blue. He'd come to see a lot of that color over the next few years.

Awake enough to really begin analyzing his situation, the baby took in the new room and his white-painted new crib with colored toys dangling overhead in one of those... he forgot the name for it. Diorama?

But other than that and the bare white ceiling, there wasn't a lot in his field of view - and it would be days before he was strong enough to lift his own head to find out more.

Back when Jared had been taking Early Childhood Development courses in university, the experts there had been saying, "You will never again work as hard as you did during your first year of life."

And a quick examination proved that to be true. He had a LOT of work ahead of him.

Nothing worked, as far as moving his body anyway. The muscles just did not exist to do much of anything yet. The bare bones of a healthy system were there, but to avoid his mom suffering like she was giving birth to a whale, nothing not absolutely essential to the baby being alive was present in a functional condition while being born.

A newborn was a human pared down to the most essential elements. Everything else he had to develop from there. Self-Guided Physical Therapy on a scale that would have made grown men weep lay before him.

All of that was normal. The scary thing was not that his body would barely respond to him or that he was in an unfamiliar world, but that he had an unbearable itching sensation inside of him, filling his whole body.

~Cancer doesn't feel like this,~ he thought in concern, making the comparison from his own experience and crossing over from uncomfortable to worried.

Worse, the air was thick and heavy, like he was in the American South with their legendary humidity, except humidity didn't itch like this did. Even his clothes and sheets itched in a maddening way, making him wonder if he was allergic to something in the air that had wound up settling out onto just about every surface he touched.

Except that could not explain why the *inside* of his body itched!

Pain was the body's signal that something was not right, and itching and pain were related. So to have that sensation all over was deeply concerning - to the point where he earnestly wondered if he'd been born with some kind of fatal condition.

Well, whether he had or not, the only thing to do was go forward as best he was able.

After a few minutes spent lying on his back waving his arms and legs in the air to hopefully build up muscle control and coordination had exhausted his rather feeble strength, he caught sight of something he'd been ignoring while focused on this strenuous workout.

A plush toy kunai lay in his crib with him.

~Oh, boy. I'm in a shinobi world!~

OoOoO

It took him very little time at all to confirm that the very heaviness of the air, to the itching of his body and blankets was chakra.

Chakra was developing inside his body, nature chakra being present in the air and every other thing... never having felt chakra before it was as obvious as lightning. Only he was not used to sensing it, so in confusion his brain interpreted that sense as itching.

That brought Jared to a choice. He could either try to ignore that unpleasant sensation and learn to live with it that way, or... well, it really wasn't much of a choice at all. Chakra control and capacity came through exercising it. Also chakra was pure power on any ninja world, and through power came survival, so the sooner he mastered his, the better off he'd be.

So that left him only one choice for dealing with it - to focus in on it until he'd mastered it, gaining enough familiarity with it so the brain no longer interpreted that sense as foreign.

In a way it was going to be just like his planned physical therapy to learn how to use fingers and toes again. So the superspy just added attaining that mastery to his list and began to cast his eyes around, looking for something to practice the leaf floating exercise on.

Minutes later he was struggling to try and float his plush toy kunai over his head.

Jared knew most of the training exercises from the show, and chakra was supposed to be a combination of both mental and physical energies. Well, he had the fully developed mind of an adult, and anyone who thinks kids don't have lots of physical energy has never had to chase one of the giggling scoundrels down. Anyone who has ever babysat knows that kids can run rings around their parents and exhaust any adult with ease... which, come to think of it, tapping into that supply of youthful energy was almost certainly why the show had the villages start training their ninja so young.

Well THAT explained something, at any rate!

It had never made any sense to him before why children started the ninja academy at age six and graduated at twelve. If they'd waited for them to grow up to eighteen or so, like modern armies, the ninja cadets would have their full adult strength and a lot more mental development backing their performance. But if the adults were aiming for ninja cadets with maximum chakra capacity, yeah, get them to start training as young as possible when their bodies are still full to the brim with the energy of growing.

Most things in the ninja world came back to chakra, so sacrificing adult strength and mental development to get more chakra for your ninja actually made sense in that context. Sending out a force of pre-pubescent warriors did not sound sane from any other perspective, but if it gave them a huge boost of extra chakra development, then yeah, it did. In fact you'd *have* to tap into puberty and those wonderful wells of physical energy that came from starting young if you wanted to aim for maximum potential chakra development.

Heh, so maybe Gai had something to those 'power of YOUTH!' speeches after all?

In fact, logically speaking, six was probably as early as they could get most kids to comprehend the basic academy lessons. Back home children that age would be in first grade, still learning their numbers and letters, just barely beginning to write.

Around here they'd be training to control a mystic energy that could affect the world.

Actually, come to think of it, Jared did not envy the academy instructors who had to cram an education about chakra into kids who'd barely obtained enough mental presence to attend - although he didn't doubt for a minute that clans would try to start their children earlier, using dedicated tutors to gain advantage, as this line of thought made it obvious that the earlier you started chakra development the more of an edge you'd have over everyone else in developing it - which also explained why everyone got so excited by a child prodigy.

Ten minutes of frustration trying and failing to float the toy kunai later, and the superspy was already exhausted and had fallen deeply back to sleep.

OoOoO

Although he did not mean for it to be, raising Jared that first week turned out to be a terrible burden upon his poor mother.

As it was, babies were already hard to keep up with. Struggling to take care of their needs was daunting during the best of times, as parenting was hard work. Every parent breathes a sigh of relief the first time their child sleeps all of the way through a night. Between feeding them every two hours, diapers, baths, and everything else, sleep deprivation for parents was the norm.

Only Jared was worse than most, as his chakra practice burned extra calories, so he drained his poor mother dry trying to fill his large appetite. That meant he ate even more often than normal for the first little while until her milk production rose to compensate. So very often she would just fall asleep in the middle of a feeding as her need for rest caught up with her.

Thankfully, just as mothers adjust to having to feed twins, soon she was producing enough milk to satisfy his hunger at one feeding and things slowed down to a more normal pace.

He tried not to pay too much attention to where his all-milk diet was coming from, but figured by the end of that week if they hadn't produced a bottle then he was stuck with the source nature had provided - and so long as he never said anything and did his best to forget any details, nobody had any cause to be embarrassed. Besides, mother's milk was said to do all sorts of good things for a child's immune system.

And he just kept telling himself that while he tried not to die of embarrassment as he ate.

But it was adapt or starve, so he adapted. And as if that wasn't bad enough, eating enough for twins caused him to need an equal increase in the number of diaper changes, and that was just pure humiliation.

Not to mention disgusting until it got taken care of.

Laying on his back with yet another dirty diaper, the redhaired boy knew he was going to get a rash unless that got taken care of. Only his poor parents had just barely gone to sleep after yet another feeding, and the adult part of his brain knew how ragged they'd been run taking care of his needs, so felt guilty over waking them up again so soon.

Distracted as he was, the toy kunai plushie once again shot out of his hands, ricoccheted off the wall and ceiling to land outside of his crib. ~And now there goes my favorite toy,~ the adult trapped in an infant's body sighed to himself. Being a baby was BORING! It was all hard work, sure, but it was all dull, repetetive stuff too. His every waking moment was dull as all he could do was lie still, exercise and eat.

Training his chakra control was the only intellectually stimulating thing he had to do. So, oddly, he was making great progress as he showed unusual drive and focus on it.

Still, nice as his parents had been about always returning that toy kunai to his crib ~and they must think I hate it, given how often they find it tossed out of the crib~ there was nothing he could do to retrieve it for himself. So that left only other options.

~Training as a chakra sensor is boring, but at least it's something I can do.~

Chakra sensing was not very challenging because frankly it was hard NOT to sense it! The energy still felt weird and foreign, making it stand out. The only difficulty he had lay in learning to interpret all of the signals he was receiving. Still, it was one good way to get back to sleep, as he'd inevitably slip off at some point during his meditations on it.

~As always, start small,~ quickly the boy attuned his attention to his chakra sense, starting with his own body, which had all of the familiar signals he'd learned to recognize over his first week of life, and which he took to mean he was healthy.

Next was to extend his awareness to sense his crib and all that lay within it. After that if he followed the normal schedual he would sense his parents' room, then he could go back to working on sensing the entire house, which was the next and incomplete stage of development of his meager chakra senses.

However, immediately upon expanding his awareness to the crib he encountered his first oddity, as his dirty diaper held an extra chakra entity. The moment he'd figured out what that had to be, the boy blushed in embarrassment, and nearly cried aloud to alert his parents so he could get his diaper changed. Only the fact that he'd brutally abused his poor parents through his frequent demands already, never out of malice, just needing that extra care, let him keep his peace and let them continue to gain badly needed sleep.

~Still, why is THAT sensing like MY chakra?!~

Actually, a moment's observation revealed that while the brown lump in his diaper was infused with his chakra, that energy was steadily dissipating from it. Then it hit him in a surge of realization what was going on.

~That's filled with my chakra because that was inside of, even part of my body! THAT'S why virtually every fire technique you see in the series shows them blowing the fire out their mouths! By taking air inside the body, they can charge it with their chakra more easily! And once it's charged, they can manipulate it more easily! It's a cost saving measure to pull those techniques off! It's got to be!~

~That also explained why so many Earth technique users spat mud out of their mouths, or water. Wind techniques probably too! Starting with stuff that's been inside you and charged with your energy would make those techniques easier to learn and cheaper to use! It HAS to! No way would they all do it that way otherwise!~ the young baby giggled in delight.

~They start the technique off inside of their bodies where presumably their chakra is strongest and easiest to control,~ the redhaired child thought excitedly. ~Only then do they move the effect outside of their bodies to take care of whatever it was supposed to do.~

Really, it was the only thing that made any sense.

But given that burst of insight, the young superspy knew what he had to do, or try to do, anyway. While he could see through his open bedroom door the open door of the bathroom across the hall and the toilet within, that was just too far away. While the changing table where he got fresh diapers applied stood directly next to his crib, and the bucket for used diapers under that.

While it still appeared a daunting distance for a boy who could not even crawl yet, it would have to do.

Silently concentrating his attention, focusing on the way his chakra felt and moving it from one place to another inside of his body, the embarrassed young superspy then transferred that focus to the one lump of his chakra that was no longer inside of his body, and felt a surge of triumph when he got it to move.

One thoroughly embarrassing and humiliating hour later, and he had not only succeeded in getting his pooh down into the used diaper bucket, but he'd also managed to clean up the mess that had resulted from his many accidents and failed attempts getting the little lump of mud to crawl there on its own. He'd even managed to clean up leftover residue, because slimy as it was, all of that muck was still infused with his chakra, thus subject to his control - once he had finally learned what he was doing, that is.

~Of course,~ the exhausted baby yawned widely. ~If anyone ever learns that my first use of a chakra technique was to clean my own diaper, I'm never going to live that down.~

~I'll just have to deny it if anyone asks,~ he thought, drifitng off to a slumber so deep he did not even really wake up during his next feeding.

OoOoO

The next morning came something different. After a week at home helping his wife adjust to her new motherhood and adapting to the new workload that required, the child's father suited up as a ninja, complete with chunin vest and headband, and headed off to work, leaving Jared terrified at the bags under the man's eyes and general exhausted state.

~Ninja is a combat profession,~ the young boy thought, in terror. ~Going off into combat already exhausted and sleep deprived gives your enemy an edge over you and vastly decreases your chance of coming back!~

One glance at his young mother showed that she was not in any better shape, exhausted to the point her health could be in real danger. ~Ok. New rule, I can't afford to simply be a burden on my parents any longer. She's almost dead on her feet, and weak enough she might get sick. So losing either or both of them is a real possibility, and unacceptable.~

Being an orphan on a ninja world was a one-way ticket to pain. ~So that means taking up more slack on my own.~

Jared had been watching his current dad suit up, and the costume matched the Naruto series pretty well, except the clothes were older and frequently patched instead of the well dressed appearance of the characters in the show. Also, while his dad's work outfit matched the standard Konoha shinobi pretty well, his forehead protector had the wrong symbol, a stylized flame instead of the Konoha leaf symbol.

~Ok, so that means alternate universe.~ the boy thought, ~Because only the Land of Fire would use a flame as their ninja symbol, but Fire Country's only ninja village was Hidden Leaf, which used a leaf symbol built out of the Uzumaki spiral. But if that's NOT the case, then what all else has changed?~

Ultimately, he was forced to shelve the issue to take care of more immediate concerns. His parents were already having a hard time taking care of him, and as they got busier with work and other things that would only get harder.

Jared quietly resolved to take care of his diaper on his own as much as possible. He could not feed himself yet, but he could handle cleaning himself thanks to the previous night, and letting his mother, as his primary caregiver now that his father was back to taking missions, sleep more and longer would hopefully aid her recovery.

They were using cloth diapers on him, rather than the modern disposable paper ones, so that meant extra washing duties the more he'd filled, and the back yard was already filled with clothes lines covered in drying diapers.

~Unfortunately,~ Jared thought as he'd contemplated his new self-given responsibilities, ~If I am to keep more diapers clean that means making both kinds of body waste crawl their way to the disposal bin until I can.~

~Which, you do what you got to do.~

Thankfully, his liquid wastes turned out to emerge just as permeated with his chakra as the solid kinds, and thus controllable. He learned to not even leave a residue behind. Having that icky, nasty stuff all over him when he made a mistake proved to be a powerful motivator.

OoOoO

Jared sat on the lawn of his parents' back yard plucking blades of grass. Some he would try and float, most often to see them shoot off into the air. Others he would try and focus his chakra through, trying to achieve splits, burns or crinkling.

After nearly a month of using chakra to have his bodily wastes crawl into the used diaper bucket and hide themselves inside of already dirty diapers he had developed a surprising proficiency with both earth and water natured chakras, so getting grass leaves to powder or moisten was no problem.

Actually, the boy thought as he looked up at the sun shining overhead, then around at the walled back yard of his parents' compound, things were going pretty good. His parents only had to deal with one diaper in ten anymore (and if he made that any less they might take him to a hospital, figuring something was wrong with him), and with the extra rest they had both made astonishing recoveries.

His parents were laughing and happy now, having guests over as they had Jared's One Month Old party. The child was able to identify no one specifically, although most wore the Konoha ninja garb along with that weird flame crest on their head plates. But despite not being able to identify individuals, he could make out generalities.

There was the blond contingent, which seeing as how that included both of Jared's new parents he figured that had to be his family. And since the other two clans represented were tall and dark haired but excessively lazy, and big boned but jovial types, he guessed that made him a Yamanaka, as the other two were plainly members of the Nara and Akamichi clans, known for their long association with each other and Konoha.

Which meant that weird flame symbol on the headbands was probably the one for Konoha in this alternate universe.

Which led to the question: What happened to the leaf symbol and the Uzumaki spiral?

Jared plucked another blade of grass, not really strong enough to do so but he'd stumbled across the basic principles of enhancing his body using chakra about a week ago now, and was using them on a tentative basis just because it was driving him mad to feel so trapped in an underdeveloped frame.

A chakra enhanced baby was still a baby, but it helped him out with basic mobility. Give it another day or two and he'd be scooting around at a full crawling speed. But today he was placed on a lawn with the other children while the adults held a barbecue.

Attention going from said adults, who were lounging around, laughing at something while the Akamichi roasted some meat, back to the blade of grass in his hand, Jared focused his chakra again and this time the leaf still shot off, just not as fast.

Attention suddenly focused in on the young boy and the adults grew silent as realization spread about what was going on.

Jared didn't even try to hide what he was doing, reaching down with one pudgy hand to yank up another blade of grass. This one he got to spin over his palm for a moment before it went shooting off to the side.

Interesting. Progress. Apparently trying to float that plush kunai, which was almost as long as he was, had been teaching him some bad habits, leading to too much chakra use for this exercise once he'd switched to leaves.

Not his fault. This party was the first time he'd touched leaves in this life.

Scooting over on his diapered bum towards a small patch of bare dirt nearby, Jared siezed up a handful and crammed it in his mouth, moistening it with saliva as well as filling it with his chakra. So far he'd proved unable to do anything with earth techniques unless the target was very much like mud, which moved a lot easier than packed earth did (which also explained why so many earth techniques started out with it).

Once he had his handful of dirt sufficiently moist, Jared removed it from his mouth and began to command the grape-sized lump to change shape. Soon he had a dirt-slug, and he had it inch up his arm and across his scalp.

Seeing the dumbfounded looks on the adults faces made him laugh.

So let them think he was a prodigy! For one part, it was true. He had a tremendous mental advantage over any actual child this age. But for the rest of it? Well, Konoha always prided itself on its 'geniuses', and it gave them extra training and opportunities. If this was going to be anything like the series, the show was going to be starring immensely powerful ninja capable of truly awesome destruction soon enough. Getting a little extra aid and attention spent on his training as they fast tracked him through could go a long way towards having the edge needed to survive those battles.

Frankly, holding back in that context was insane!

What Jared was NOT expecting was to be snatched up by wide-eyed, fearful adults and stashed back inside in his crib in a terrified rush.

No, that didn't make any sense to him at all.

~Ok,~ he thought to himself, sucking on his thumb. His slug and even his latest leaf had both been taken from him by adults that were now having a whispered conversation in another room - all speaking in some butchered dialect of Japanese that he couldn't understand yet. ~What has happened that Konoha has suddenly become fearful of bloodlines or child geniuses?~

OoOoO

Author's Notes

A bit more dry than I'd like. Usually I'd put in a little more humor, if I could. But, eh, it's been a while, and quite frankly I am glad to be able to write anything after this long a hiatus.

It also has always struck me as odd why self-inserts to the Naruto universe always seem to focus in on taijutsu skills, instead of capitalize on the unusual advantages they frequently have with chakra. Or why they are so fearful of being seen as geniuses, when geniuses get all sorts of favorable training opportunities, and the SI character is going to wind up dealing with the same very elite problems either way if the series gets followed at all.

Of course, what this SI was not aware of was how very different a Konoha he wound up in.


	2. Chapter 2

Whirlpool Sky  
by Skysaber

Chapter Two

OoOoO

"If anyone ever finds out about this, I'll be too embarrassed to live," Jared spoke softly to himself.

A bright flash of brief flame above his diaper pail accompanied his statement.

Having nothing to do, all day, every day, except practice chakra control exercises, he had made a bit of progress - actually, some rather stunning progress, to be honest. But there was literally nothing for his adult mind to fixate on but practicing with chakra.

The only problem with that was he was forced to work with the materials at hand, and, well, most of a baby's life is milk and crap.

Jared watched flames die down in the air above his diaper bucket. Because he was NOT going to be setting fire to milk any time soon. For one thing it would hurt his mom.

Dropping down from his standing position, having held on to the inside of his crib bars to hold his weak body upright, the spy fell first onto his diaper-clad bottom, then onto his back and started to breathe heavily.

In through nose, out through mouth, just like countless martial arts and meditation exercises taught you, just getting a feel for the chakra inside permeating the lungs before he spread his awareness to the air itself, took a particularly deep breath, and exhaled.

A very small breeze started at his mouth, up out through the window above his bed, before the chakra-laden air reached and tugged upon the leaves of the rose bush that grew upon that wall of the house.

It was his second or third try before a leaf tugged free and wafted into the bedroom, brought by the tiny gusts he generated to fall still upon the sheets of his crib bed.

He hadn't been outside for a month, so if he wanted to get leaves to practice with, this was his only way.

Jared frowned as he contemplated that. It wasn't too much of a problem either way, but he still did not understand what had happened during that one family gathering in the back yard.

Plucking up his newly captured leaf in one pudgy hand, the boy had to decide which art he'd focus on with this one. Because getting them was so hard, he used each leaf until it was cut into flinders, crinkled and then any scraps remaining were ash. None of this 'cut it once' nonsense. That was wasteful. He'd use it up until he couldn't use it anymore. But he still had to admit that he was probably learning more *getting* the leaves than using them.

Case in point, the window above his bed was normally shut these days. That wouldn't do, so he had to open it. Only no *way* was his weak body up to that task! So he had to use chakra. Today it had been a water technique, get some moisture inside of the crack you want to open, then shove more and more inside until the window slides upon its track for a bit. He'd used the bottom track of the window as a canal to shove it all of the way open.

He could do as well using earth manipulation, using largely the same theories for getting the window to move. He had yet to succeed with the other elements, but was making progress - especially using wind. He figured if hovercraft on his homeworld could ferry hundreds of tons supported on a bed of air, he could get a measly window to open, and was pretty close to doing so.

Fire and lightning were harder, but he had theories. Thermal expansion was what he was perusing for fire, the tendency of things to expand or shrink as their temperature changes. He figured that eventually, by expanding or shrinking just the right bits at the right moments he could have the frame basically walk itself open. By studying and 'listening' with his chakra he had gotten a good feel for how the window frame heated up gradually when the sunlight warmed it, or as it cooled after night fell, so was making good progress there as he could now duplicate that just a little, and could speed or slow down the effect when nature was already doing it. But he was a long ways away from doing that by himself, to say nothing of doing it fast, or only to select little bits. Only even after he'd gotten that right the coordination to get the frame walking was going to be a real bear.

For lightning he was just going to go for straight electromagnetics, the same way that a bullet train or a railgun worked, only of course his would be a lot slower. He didn't plan on shooting his window frame towards anyone. Frankly, he didn't intend to break anything at all.

It was too hard getting materials to use for his chakra experiments as it was. He didn't need his parents to brick over his window, or anything - which they might do if he broke it and they couldn't afford a replacement.

Frankly, this world confused the little superspy, as it did not conform to the Naruto universe depicted in the show very well at all. First was that different forehead emblem for Konoha. Next was that he had begun noticing a near complete dearth of technology.

Naruto had a fridge in his apartment. Those relied on electric power outlets, and power lines and a frankly staggering amount of support infrastructure that just didn't appear anywhere the little newborn spy had been able to see.

His parents' house had no electrical outlets. No fridge or other appliances, not even electric lights. At night his family mostly slept or used candles, although he'd seen the occasional oil lamp in use when they had to be up for some time. The house looked modern enough on the surface, but all sorts of details failed to match up. For one, the window frame that was his current nemesis was wrought iron instead of aluminum.

For that matter, the boy could not recall seeing any aluminum or cheap plastic, or any other 'modern' materials anywhere. Most stuff was genuine wood, or glass, or, like in the case of his window frame, iron.

Not even steel, just iron. Which made NO sense, as those materials, glass and steel, were made at equivalent temperatures, so a society that could achieve plenty of one could have the other easily enough.

Then again, steel rusts, whereas wrought iron could be astonishingly weather resistant. So perhaps he was just overthinking things and they had all the steel they wanted, just chose not to use it for exterior fittings on houses?

Of course, another possibility was his parents were just the local equivalent of Luddites or Amish, or some other anti-technology sect.

He really couldn't say for certain when most of what he'd seen of the world came from the perspective of his crib. Of course, maybe that would be different if he hadn't been caught crawling. Then maybe they wouldn't close his door as often, and he had nowhere close to enough strength to be able to cope with the doorknob.

Not tall enough to reach it, nowhere even close to the arm strength to turn it even if he got proficient enough at tree-walking (or, in this case, wall-crawling) to get there, elemental techniques out until he got a lot more control at fine manipulation, and he was a long way away from being able to do two chakra exercises at once - say, to wall-crawl and use chakra to enhance his physical abilities.

Another few months maybe, but not now.

So he was left with improvised tools for most of his chakra exercises, which amounted to anything he could scare up. Because he had more chakra than he knew what to do with, no physical ability to speak of, and so all of his interactions with the world were going to be chakra-based for a time.

So he wanted to be good at it.

Out in the back yard he'd had plenty of opportunity to play with leaves, and that had shown him that his diaper cleaning exercises had developed plenty of skill at using earth or water. So he was trying to bring his other affinities up to speed. Breathing in and out and focusing in on doing that was giving him some affinity for using wind, and manipulating the tiny gusts produced was giving him some minor equivalent to telekinesis - in the same way that a tiny, zippo lighter was related to a bonfire, anyway. But at least it was something, even if the best he could do with it was to retrieve a leaf off a bush now and then.

Once again, lightning and fire were the tough ones to practice in his current, infant state.

Jared glanced down again in the direction of his diaper pail, wondering if it had recharged itself yet, because there were precious few things in his bedroom that he was willing to burn, and the methane gasses given off by human waste just about topped the list. Not only did it give him brief flashes during which he could study the chakra of fire, but it also served to reduce the smell he had to endure living so close to it.

Cutting off the tiniest portion of his leaf that he could manage using chakra, the boy crinkled it just to get that extra bit of lightning practice in, then filled that tiny cut off portion with fire natured chakra as best he could, until it grew bright like an ember.

He'd burned himself doing this more than a few times, which was why when he practiced with fire chakra anymore he combined that with the leaf floating exercise. It made everything at least four times harder, especially to learn, but at least this way he wasn't getting burns and blisters on his hands anymore.

Wouldn't want to freak out his parents and get them to baby-proof his life any MORE, now would we?

Holding out his hand he kept feeding his ember chakra so it burned clear and bright, then wafted it over to the diaper bucket with a gust of wind chakra. This was no less tricky as he had to switch almost seamlessly from leaf floating to the wind gust, which was something he was only beginning to get with practice.

Ember in place, he dropped it through a hole in the lid on his diaper bucket, focusing all of his fire natured chakra he could muster on what he wished to happen next.

Once more he was reward with a bright flash of brief flame out of his diaper pail.

Good. That accomplished, Jared then lay down again and began to rub his blankets together. Practicing lightning natured chakra in a house without any electrical appliances was beastly hard. Nothing convenient like a light bulb to try to run a current through, or anything like that. But if static electricity was going to be his only source of sparks, he'd use that.

OoOoO

At just about two months old, Jared woke up in his crib and yawned. Another exciting day of using super powers to accomplish mundane and ordinary, day-to-day tasks.

Oh, joy.

Luckily he was only sleeping about fifteen hours per day now, so there was opportunity to get a lot more done. Placing a hand on the side of his crib he stuck there with chakra, then wall-crawled up over the side, onto the wall of his room, then around on down to the floor. It would perhaps have been more direct to go up and down the wall of his crib, but as yet he couldn't handle the sharp reverse turn going up over the top then down the outside.

That task done he crawled over to the door, popped the latch as that was easier than trying to twist the doorknob, then scooted on through into the bathroom. First using chakra to scale Mt. Toilet, he took care of business, then went on directly to the sink.

The bathroom overall was a mix of western and Japanese styles. No surprise, really. But the bath was an old-style furo that had to be heated by a fire lit underneath. Also the sink had only one handle, and try as he might he'd never found a way to get hot water from it, leading him to suspect his house had no water heater. So he stoppered up the bottom drain and filled it with cold, then used his new, hard won fire affinity to heat the water until it was a comfortable temperature.

Then, continuing to use chakra to keep his bath warm, he slipped naked into the sink and proceeded to wash himself. Something his original mother had taught him, adult bath tubs were just too big for babies, while sinks were the perfect size - and at a convenient height for the adults washing them too!

However, here he had no adult assistance. So he merely sat there while using earth chakra to animate the bar of soap to suds him up, then his control of water to grant him a good, all over scrub with the currents of the water itself doing all of the work. He had grown strong in his water and earth affinities, developing and using aids like this to accomplish tasks his body was just too young to do.

Using two or three repeats of the soap then scrub cycle, making sure to get everywhere, and he left the still-warm waters of the sink to stand while a hot breeze dried him off.

While he could have used water manipulation to cause the lingering wetness to just sluice away, and had indeed done that on occasion, most often he deliberately chose to use wind for it (and fire to heat the wind) so he could develop them also.

Once washed, it was back to his crib with him, using wind to close the door to his room again so as not to tip anyone off to his now-daily escapes from confinement. It was actually fairly tricky to do, as the door was heavy and had a lot of mass so it was hard to get moving in the first place, calling for a lot more volume of wind than most things he'd done before. But it was also big and flat like a sail, so once it caught that wind and started moving it caught the momentum well and was hard to stop without it slamming shut.

Slamming doors is a good way to wake up sleeping ninja parents, so was to be avoided.

All in all, closing his bedroom door was one of his more challenging of wind chakra control exercises, and only partly because the consequences of failure were so high.

While he might be quite fond of his first two affinities, it was thanks to chores like warming his bathwater and this that his fire and wind affinities were catching up fast. Lightning still lagged behind, however, and that irked him.

But there was only so much about electricity to be learned from static cling!

Once back in his bed, with his parents about to wake up and feed him before beginning their own days, it was time for more chakra sensing, as that was one of the very few techniques he could practice while in his parents' arms without alerting them to anything.

It was when new chakra signatures approached the front door that his day went off the rails.

OoOoO

~I can't believe they mind-walked me,~ Jared thought in bewilderment. That just seemed so unreal.

The Yamanaka elders, or that's at least who he assumed they were (and the fact that they used the family techniques was pretty convincing) had shown up not long after his parents got out of bed, been guided by his father into Jared's room, and as soon as that they'd placed their hands on his brow and were inside of the superspy's head, looking around.

They'd checked him thoroughly, but thankfully when the Agency sent him to a world the backgrounds they gave him were solid, so even with a half a dozen Yamanaka elders mind-walking the lad, searching for any signs of possession or foreign control or influence, all they found was a perfectly normal baby boy - no trace of his adult personality or experiences whatsoever.

Just a baby who'd learned to play with chakra.

Jared remained blissfully unaware of any paternity tests that had been run on him that month, proving he was indeed his parents' child. Being red haired when both of his parents were blond was not impossible, since red hair was a recessive gene and anyway this was an anime world where pink as a hair color passed without any comment.

No, the real surprise occurred when, after the mind walk, an illusion technique dropped from the corner of Jared's bedroom, revealing that a ninja had been positioned there. From the look of the entry hole carved through the outside wall, with its own covering plate, the armchair and snacks, plus the overall mess, if Jared had to guess that observation post had been put there shortly after his One Month Old party and been staffed continually around the clock ever since.

~Well, so much for me being any good as a chakra sensor. I missed that entirely,~ Jared thought as the observation ninja joined the elders and his parents in rapid fire talk. Several more Yamanaka arrived through the front door and joined this discussion, and about the only positive thing Jared could see was that no one had put a kunai to his throat yet.

~They will have seen me chakra-walking on walls, using elements to open my door and window, fetch leaves and practice with them, and everything else I've done in here.~

The infant superspy sat down and began sucking his toes - a surprisingly cathartic activity. ~Well, the elders will have seen that the only mind in me is my own, even if the Agency protections caused them to miss the adult parts. The spy from out of the duck blind will be able to assure them that I'm not a polyjuiced replacement or whatever the local equivalent is. I wonder what they will conclude is going on?~

~And I'm curious. Will I live through it?~

OoOoO

Jared blinked, sitting with his head shaved at another family barbecue, this time in the Nara family back yard, celebrating their own son's One Month Old party.

~ I guess I get to live,~ he concluded belatedly.

He'd been sure it was the end when, after a furious argument among the adults, Jared's own father had whipped out a kunai and approached the crib. As his mother held him and the blade approached, the superspy had closed his eyes, only for his head to get shaved of all of that red hair. Even his eyebrows had been lost.

Then it was off to this party as though they had not been spying on him for a month. Jared had been placed under a sun shade, with walls and bushes around so as to cut him off from view of ninja jumping overhead, also a teenage Nara girl set to watch over him, the same one who'd emerged from under that illusion in the corner of his room if he was not mistaken, then left to do as he pleased.

To test the waters, so to speak, he had even begun to launch pebbles from his hand using chakra techniques learned from his failures at leaf floating.

No reaction, save his Nara minder had helpfully painted a bullseye for him to practice his aim on, and was working out how to get across to the kid that she'd award him with candy once he'd hit the center. Jared smacked his lips and tried to pretend that he wasn't finding that enormously motivational. In the end he let the Nara chick convince him and enjoyed the taste of the first non-milk treat he'd had on this world.

~Ahhh, sheer bliss!~

Face sticky with candy residue, Jared rolled back onto his back to get his pudgy hands on some grass leaves. He had no trouble admitting the fact that the ninja had managed to out-sneaky him this past month. That they were willing to let things go on as they were certainly earned them points with him, even if their motivations did confuse him.

He'd like to know what was going on, but learning the language was probably necessary first. The local version of Japanese bore about as much resemblance to the version he was familiar with as Cantonese did to Mandarin - in other words, not very much. The dialects were so extreme they were effectively separate languages.

On the definite plus side, though, was the fact that they had now achieved the status he'd been reaching for a month ago where everybody seemed ok with his intense chakra practice. In fact, they'd seen far more than he'd hoped to reveal in that department. What was left was not even remotely ordinary.

There are ordinary levels of genius, just as your average smart kid. Then there are normal but far more significant levels of genius, like your standard child prodigies. Then you get once in a lifetime, or once in a century people, and at the top true legendary geniuses like Mozart or Einstein. Not once in a lifetime, but once EVER!

And they must think him around that level. Because the superspy could not think of any conclusion the adults could have reached but that he was born with as much chakra control as a seasoned adult, even an impressively skilled one considering he was working on five elements when most jonin were only required to have two.

Other children were playing about, but on finding a short section of discarded ninja wire in the grass Jared started exploring transmitting lightning chakra along it. ~Oh! I can definitely use this!~

Then he paused, his hands filled with both grass and wire.

~I wonder if they'll let me keep anything this time?~

Dozens of children were running about, most of them age four or lower. In fact there was a definite age gap with really young kids being surprisingly more prevalent than ordinary demographics would call for, something Jared would have loved to spend some thoughts puzzling out, save for the fact that the party got interrupted by two Uchiha.

They appeared suddenly, just jumping down in the midst of the party. Jared only caught a glimpse of them but they were unmistakable, Sharingan blazing, Uchiha fans on their backs, and where everyone else was wearing threadbare, patched and practical clothing, so much so that Jared had stopped paying any notice to it, these two were clothed and armored like lords, wearing swords and top notch gear in every other department.

Their voices were angry, and they stole half the food, not to mention ruined the mood of the party. But Jared really wasn't paying any attention to that, because no sooner had the two Uchiha appeared than his Nara minder, that sweet girl who'd fed him candy and been the laziest, most laid back babysitter he ever saw, letting him get away with anything, this same girl had jabbed him with a knockout drug the moment the Uchiha arrived.

~And I never even saw her moving,~ was Jared's last waking thought of that day.

OoOoO

~Well, at least she got the dosage right and didn't kill me. That's always comforting.~

The superspy awoke in a pile of other kids all crowded into someone else's crib, in a room he was not familiar with.

He might have started panicking and taking drastic measures, only he saw one of the babies there with him, in fact the boy they'd been holding the One Month Old party for if he was not mistaken, was wearing a lovingly crafted, brand new baby outfit with "Shikamaru" sewn over the heart.

~So, we're probably just staying the night over at the Nara place,~ he thought, then did a double take, staring again at Shikamaru's embroidered name.

~I can READ!~

Well, that changed everything.

He was already crawling up the wall out of his borrowed crib, having to climb over several other sleeping children to do it but managing somehow not to wake anyone.

~The Nara clan are geniuses,~ he thought. ~I've never known a genius yet who didn't hoard reading material when they could get them. Perhaps some books around here will have some of that information I so desperately need.~

There were four adults sleeping in the baby's nursery, two of them sleeping with their hands on kunai, plainly on guard. Just as plainly, however, they were exhausted. Jared was able to slip by out of the room.

The first book he found was a bingo book that had been placed on a table when someone was dumping out their pockets so they could sleep, and already he discovered his answer.

Years later he'd ask the question, and his father would phrase the answer thus. "A redhaired child performing an Uzumaki technique? We thought they'd kill you."

The chakra control exercises show in the series were held to be Uzumaki family secrets on this world. No one else knew how to do them. In the bingo book walking on walls or water were listed as Uzumaki family techniques, skills they were known and recognized for on the battlefield, not simple control exercises that were almost universally known and practiced.

So was launching items or weapons from your hands using bursts of chakra, like he'd done with those leaves during that first party, right before his family had panicked.

Jared was wrong. They did not think him a Mozart or an Einstein. What he had inadvertently done was show them another level of ability entirely, on beyond legendary to mythic, truly Herculean performance. As in "Hercules strangled a snake to death while still a babe in his crib" levels of impressive.

Because as far as anyone else could tell he'd been born with greater chakra control than any adult had achieved, ever, on this world, to the point of reinventing another clan's techniques before he was old enough to crawl.

To these people that was Sage of the Six Paths levels of impressive, right there.

Moments later he had found a shelf of books and was burrowing into them for more answers. It took him all night reading and well into the morning, when the adults began to stir, but he did piece together information from several histories, and Nara clan biographies, to get a handle on the basic outlines at least.

It WAS an alternate universe, and the diversion point appeared to be way back before the formation of the ninja villages, when the Uzumaki clan were just in the wrong place at the wrong time to be befriended by the Senju clan.

Now as any student of Naruto knows, it was the Senju clan that got together with the Uchiha clan to start Konoha, the very first of the Hidden Villages, and with that success lead all sorts of loose and wandering ninja clans to form their own, leading to the whole village system.

Jared would be years confirming the details, but as near as he could tell that still happened, only without the influence of the Uzumaki several key things happened differently. In the mainline universe, Hashirama Senju had married an Uzumaki and became the First Hokage. That didn't happen here.

Here, without the things he'd ordinary have learned from his wife's clan, Hashirama Senju must not have been as strong as he was in the mainline, because the title of Hokage had instead passed to his rival Madara Uchiha.

And that one change kicked off a cascade of differences, because Hashirama Senju was a diplomat almost without peer, always seeking a peaceful resolution where possible, and able to get feuding ninja clans with a long history of slaughtering each other to live together in relative peace and harmony. But Madara Uchiha was a warrior, first and foremost, unafraid of fighting to get what he wanted, and the difference in their leadership styles alone made for a very different world because while the Senju would have expanded through diplomacy, under the command of the Uchiha they did so through conquest.

This made a lot of people unhappy with Konoha, and they'd had a great deal of difficulty expanding their troop base, as very few ninja clans joined them willingly. Most who did so were coerced through threat of annihilation via the Tailed Beasts the Senju controlled.

Where Hashirama Senju in the mainline would have given away the Tailed Beasts to other villages in the interests of promoting peace, with Madara as their Hokage he reluctantly followed his Hokage's commands to use them as weapons. And, for a very brief time under Madara Uchiha's reign, Konoha had controlled most of what was now called the Elemental Countries.

Naturally, such things don't last.

To no one's surprise rather a lot of ninja spent rather a lot of time working specifically on how to counter Konoha's greatest weapons - namely, the Uchiha and the Tailed Beasts wielded by their Senju servants.

It was when the Uzumaki reentered the scene that they became the surprising heroes of an oppressed ninja world, using their sealing knowledge to capture and seal away those beasts from ambush so Konoha could no longer use them in battle. And without the threat of annihilation to motivate their troops, most of the ninja clans Madara had coerced to service vanished, leaving Konoha behind forever.

Some clans, like the Hyuga, had never joined Konoha (they'd always hated the Uchiha, and with the Uchiha in charge, they had no reason to join that village), while others, like the Aburame, left it as soon as the Uzumaki had defeated the Tailed Beasts in battle.

Konoha itself had never reached half the size it would have if led by Senju. It had also built up enough enemies with powerful grudges they LOST the First Shinobi War, being forced into concessions and tribute payments which led directly to the Second Shinobi War which they lost badly enough Konoha had been overrun, and the village built by Hashirama Senju's wood techniques had been completely destroyed.

What survivors gathered to reform Konoha, in a different location, had only been enough to achieve the status of a minor village. But despite this new Konoha no longer being even a player among the major villages, they managed to lose the Third Shinobi War quite handily too, just by serving as a convenient battleground for more the powerful villages - and the Fourth Hokage had been another Uchiha. The Yellow Flash never made an appearance, as none of the clans that gave birth to him had ever been part of this Konoha's ninja forces.

But the politics of the situation were not the only major change he found.

It would be many years before Jared pieced together enough bits from history books to understand the changes completely, but to him the biggest and most relevant difference was that each ninja clan had their own specialty, and the twin specialties of the Uzumaki were both sealing techniques and their expertise with chakra - neither of which had been made available to the Senju clan at any point during this current timeline.

Now it should not be surprising that a man like Hashirama Senju, who gave away such a tremendous advantage as the literal engines of destruction that were his Tailed Beasts, in the interests of promoting peace, that he would have no problem giving away other, lesser advantages. And in the mainline he had been quite free in passing out to the other villages the sealing knowledge and chakra secrets that had been passed to him by the Uzumaki.

But here he simply did not have that chance, so they'd never been distributed any more than the Akamichi clan passed out their multi-size techniques.

As a direct consequence sealing knowledge was very rare in this version of the Elemental Countries, even more so than in the mainline, with even formerly common items like storage scrolls and explosive tags being as scarce as good chakra weapons were in the mainline. They existed, but no ordinary ninja ever expected to own one, and when they did turn up it was most often as battle booty taken from the corpses of those who had owned them.

Likewise, the Hyuga clan had never started to seal their branch members, because quite frankly they never learned enough sealing knowledge to know how.

But chakra control exercises everybody knew in the show had never spread beyond the Uzumaki in this universe. In fact those, like their sealing knowledge, were felt to be Uzumaki secrets, just like the Yamanaka mind switching. So it was a very confused bunch of adults from the Ino-Shika-Cho alliance who had seen Jared spontaneously develop those same secret abilities at the tender age of one month old.

Theoretically, anybody could develop another clan's techniques. But realistically, that tended not to happen. So it was a Very Big Deal that Skysaber began to suddenly manifest what were felt to be clan secrets of ninja from an entirely different village.

Truly, the little superspy had had no idea just how amazing all of his chakra practice was. But he'd had no way of knowing just how starved for it this world was.

Doing some more research, this time in the paltry medical texts, and he discovered that one's chakra capacity was felt to be fixed, like how tall you'd eventually grow, and they just accepted that. People didn't train to grow taller, they just accepted the height nature provided.

And those who did not have the innate chakra control to learn family or clan techniques? They simply did not learn them.

~Oh, [Expletive Deleted], forget Akatsuki!~ Jared thought in a rising panic ~Thanks to the techniques I've been throwing around so casually, I represent the key to something that everybody wants, and NEEDS if they want to achieve power~

It was with a sick feeling he reached a conclusion his family had known for months. ~The entire ninja WORLD is going to be after me like they'd never wanted a mere demon container or bloodline!~

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

I am going by the assumption that during the Warring Clans period, before the ninja villages got settled, each clan had their own specialties, guarded knowledge and secret techniques. Some of those, like the Yamanaka mind jutsu, or the Akamichi multi-size technique, remain special and secret to this day.

And some did not.

Everybody has always said that the Uzumaki were sealing specialists who were amazingly good at chakra, so I made those their specialty. And since your special skills are the reason you survive in a hostile world, they would not have been handing those out without cause.

It is an established Narutoverse fact that Hashirama Senju not only handed out the Tailed Beasts, but caused that the other villages would be taught how to seal them in containers.

So in-universe, the assumption is that Hashirama Senju was an amazingly charismatic man who got the Uzumaki to teach him their secret knowledge once he'd married into their clan, but he then handed it out in the interests of peace, just like he'd handed out his own advantage in form of the Tailed Beasts.

But here, since he never got access to it, he never shared it. So delete it from your picture of this world, and you find you are looking at a very different ninja environment indeed.

And that would not be the only change, as Madara never got to throw a tantrum over not being Hokage. And just think about the cascade of difference THAT kicks off!


	3. Chapter 3

Whirlpool Sky  
by Skysaber

Chapter Three

OoOoO

A kunoichi ran desperately across the surface of the water of a rice patty, panting heavily as she clutched the bleeding wound in her side. She had no idea how they'd discovered her through her disguise, but that wasn't important now.

Getting away was.

The kunoichi paused, peering into the darkness of the woodlands, sensing movement, before darting off at an even greater pace than before. She'd shed parts of her peasant disguise. When infiltrating Konoha no chakra technique would suffice for a disguise, so she'd taken this peasant clothing from off a clothes line, leaving coin to pay for it in its stead. But those parts that hindered movement she'd now cast away.

Everything now was speed, outpacing her enemies in a race for life.

She darted up a cliff, hoping to buy time and delay her enemies, only they came into view bounding from rock to rock using leaps to counteract the advantage she got from being able to run straight up the rock face.

That was their mistake. Fighting on a vertical surface was an Uzumaki specialty. She at once changed course and began charging to the left, cutting across their leaps while flinging kunai bearing explosive tags where they must inevitably land. Once you've committed to a leap you've got no options, you are going to land at a certain place and time.

Explosions went off and enemy ninja perished. She resumed her course.

Konoha was notoriously difficult to infiltrate, and she had no idea how the Military Police had found her disguised as one peasant among many. But none of that mattered now. The only thing left was getting away.

Getting away and reporting to Whirlpool Village that she'd felt an Uzumaki chakra signature using Uzumaki techniques inside the enemy village of Konoha. She'd tried to investigate, hoping that she could free whichever of her kinsmen had been captured there, but that had failed. The only thing left was to let her family know.

But her escape route had been predicted, and the Uzumaki kunoichi came down from one of her own leaps to find an Uchiha standing before her, one with a Magnekyo Sharingan.

"Tsukuyomi."

OoOoO

After spending most of that night up and reading, Jared slept most of the following day and as far as further research he was only able to get a glance at a map before his family left to go to their own home, carrying him along in a bundle of blankets.

~Ok, there is a BAY where Rain and River countries ought to be, and Wave simply isn't there.~ The superspy thought in surprise. ~Not to mention the coasts and mountain ranges are all messed up. I guess that when Konoha used the Tailed Beasts in battle, they weren't kidding that those critters could rearrange the landscape. Islands are missing and new land thrown up out of the sea, and the borders don't look anything like what I remember.~

A moment's more thought provided a further, chilling, realization.

~Oh boy! I don't know where ANYTHING is anymore!~

On the plus side, once his parents got him home they decided to play a new game with Jared, and that game was called, "Is there anything our clever little boy can't learn?"

And Jared was happy to answer, "No."

His mother almost immediately started to read to him out of children's storybooks, and it had something of the opposite of the usual effect. When most children's parents read to them the child following along learns to read. Instead, Jared started associating the known kanji for the unintelligible noises she'd been making and started to associate meaning with those sounds, starting to decode their otherwise incomprehensible dialect from that.

The Nara girl who'd been the spy in his room was there, in fact she moved in to their house on a more or less permanent basis as Jared's full-time minder and instructor, apparently on the basis of her success in getting him to hit the mark on a bullseye in return for some candy because she brought a small stack of books and scrolls and candy with her.

And what was on those books and scrolls? To Jared's delight it was all of the basic stuff every ninja had to know, but that never got described in the show. Things like sharpening your senses against enemy ambushes, or tracking very rapid attacks, increasing a body's development of muscle and dexterity, and retaining it longer so you didn't have to devote all day, every day, to training to achieve what they considered basic fitness.

Because let's face it, no Olympic athlete performs at anything close to the level of even the genin seen in the Naruto series, and Olympic training represents pretty much the best that real world fitness types have figured out how to do to a body.

For ninja to achieve more, they had to have more understanding or resources.

In this case it was both, and it amused Jared when he got to those scrolls himself and read through their contents to discover that these were all Senju-created techniques, shared with the village as part of the whole enticement package Hashirama used to tempt clans to form a ninja village in the first place.

~Makes sense, I suppose. People don't do things without reason, and offering these to other clans would have been a powerful incentive.~ Jared sucked on his foot, while reading over the scrolls, before he shook with the force of a powerful insight. ~And since these had all been Senju-ONLY techniques prior to the formation of villages, it makes more sense now why every time someone needed to fight the Uchiha, they'd called in the Senju clan to do it. If the Senju were moving at ninja-velocity while the Uchiha and everyone else was restricted to normal person speed, that would enable them to fight on much more equal terms against the predictive nature of the Sharingan.~

A moment's more thought revealed, ~One of the limits once imposed on the Sharingan was that they couldn't copy a jutsu without seeing the handseals - and these are all seal-less techniques, so the Uchiha wouldn't have been able to copy them.~

That would have made these Senju created techniques that allowed them to jump very far, run very fast, and fall for improbable distances without harm very frustrating for anyone who had to fight them without those advantages. ESPECIALLY the Uchiha, who took affront at anyone using techniques they couldn't copy.

Jared sat on his diapered bottom pondering that, and concluded, ~Yeah, getting offered to learn techniques that had always been able to defeat you and that you couldn't copy would have been a powerful incentive to the Uchiha to join a village.~

From reading this, Hashirama had obviously planned for the ninja villages to be essentially massive clans where people shared their techniques and skills with each other, and to start the whole thing off he had been happy to generously offer his own clan's secrets to anyone who joined with him in creating Konoha.

And it had worked. Other clans had joined and offered up some of their own trademark skills and abilities. From the Sarutobi clan had come what every student ninja in the series learns at the Academy: the basic clone, the Replacement technique, and the Disguise jutsu. From the Yamanaka and Nara clans came memory techniques they'd worked out together for absorbing and retaining large blocks of information easily - a priceless skill considering how many codes and passwords and things most ninja had to memorize, sometimes on a daily basis as they got reassigned or codes got broken during wartime.

The Yamanaka had also contributed a self-hypnosis technique for enabling the mind to completely forget certain blocks of information while enduring torture, so one could never be forced to give up certain knowledge, like how to perform clan techniques. One could not block away everything that way, but it was very helpful.

Akamichi had contributed food pills, concentrated rations that could keep a ninja active for three days.

The Nara, while using their shadows, had actually worked out some of the basic principles of the chakra string more or less by accident, and when they'd shared that knowledge with the Sarutobi some of those ninja had invented the Replacement technique - which on this world at least worked by sending out a chakra string to grab onto a loose object of approximately equal mass, then switching places with it.

The baby lay back and breathed out a very impressed breath of air at that remarkable feat before squirming around again to lay on his belly and read more of the scrolls.

Having sole access to this shared collection of village secrets would have been a massive advantage that could well have done as much as the Tailed Beasts to put Konoha in charge of the world for a time. But reading further, he discovered to his disappointment that part of the concessions forced out of the village when they'd lost the First Shinobi War was that virtually every other village had plundered Konoha's secrets and gotten access to them.

So now all of these tricks were basic knowledge, common across all of the Elemental Countries. Still, Jared eagerly absorbed them all, soaking them up like a sponge and happy to have them.

A baby was born as a digestive tract with eyes, everything else had to be developed, and he was still working on standing without aid as one of his current, major challenges. But while his body took months to improve, and could only grow so fast, there did not seem to be any such limit on his chakra.

Where to most young kids spending hours of dedicated practice to master a simple but boring chakra exercise was a drag and took time away from hanging out with friends or other things they'd rather be doing, as an infant the spy literally had no distractions - and where an hour of work before he got any results might be a painful price to a mature ninja, or even a teen, who had to fit that into a schedule already filled with other things, to Jared it was a joy and a relief from the prison that was his currently incapable body.

It was something to do.

For the time being chakra practice came pretty darn close to being his reason for living, as it was the one aspect of his life where his own efforts got rewarded by results at a meaningful pace. Rather than wait months until his legs were improved to where he was strong enough to walk, doing something like sending a chakra-charged wire or an intangible string to get an object after only a few hours was an idea that left him feeling positively giddy!

Konoha had never truly put all that much effort into fully developing the potential of chakra strings. However, Jared had seen the series, and knew of the kind of amazing things Suna had gotten up to with their puppet techniques. The full extent of that was almost certainly well beyond his current abilities without an expert puppet master to act as an instructor, which he didn't and probably would never have. Still, the idea of sending out chakra strings to act as magical prosthetics to serve in place of his currently incapable body sounded pretty good, as there was so much his tiny, infant body just could not do.

So he made place on his practice schedule for work on forming strings.

OoOoO

Fugaku Uchiha, Head of the Uchiha clan and Fifth Hokage (those two jobs had always been linked since the foundation of Konoha) lounged with his trademark perpetual scowl on his face as a blonde-haired kunoichi was brought in before his golden throne and laid upon the semi-precious mosaic tiled floor of his office.

"What is this interruption?" the Fifth Hokage gave a petulant growl, picking up a sweetened fish roll from off a tray of same and munching upon it noisily.

"Lord Hokage," the lead of the two Military Police officers bowed. Fugaku knew this one, one of the rare few Uchiha who had activated a Magnekyo Sharingan but not yet gone blind from the curse of bearing it.

Never mind. He would soon enough.

The officer continued speaking from his bow, not sensing his superior's thoughts, "You ordered that at first opportunity, an Uzumaki seal master to be brought before you. We have captured this kunoichi on her attempting to infiltrate Konoha, and she is an Uzumaki."

This was actually good enough to interrupt Fugaku's dinner. He waved aside the tray of expensive delicacies and wiped his hands on the sleeves of his robes, irreparably staining fabric that was worth more than most ninja saw in their lives. "Well," his scowl lightened somewhat, though nothing, not even the private company of his wife or sons, could remove it entirely. "That is interesting."

The Hokage rose, long robes sweeping the floor, immaculately polished by servants but scattered with debris from his dinner, behind him. Once, then twice the scowling man circled the unconscious Uzumaki, marking her face and that she still wore part of the dress of a peasant.

Bending low, Fugaku stroked a finger slowly along the helpless kunoichi's skin above her throat, the nails of his fingers over a foot long and curled. "Do you hold the secrets that we seek, little Uzumaki? Never mind, we shall know soon enough."

Fugaku reared back and laughed, filling that chamber with the highly unpleasant sound.

OoOoO

Over the next few days, now that he'd been mind-walked and pronounced clear of foreign influences, Jared spent a fair chunk of time attending other children's birthday parties.

The clans were HUGE!

It turned out, without chakra control training, only about twelve percent of any given ninja clan had enough innate control of their chakra to serve as the type of ninja seen in the series - the high power ones flinging jutsu around. Rather than fewer ninja, however, this just made for larger clans, as they had more children hoping to make up the numbers of ninja needed.

As for the rest? As Jared's father would later put it, "They still provide valuable service."

Some practiced pure martial arts and weapon techniques and became soldiers, mostly guards and stuff. The rest just filled out what support roles they could as nurses, farmers, tailors and blacksmiths, whatever jobs they could find.

And that was the case among the ninja families. Jared was told the numbers were even worse among the general populace, to the point where anyone born with sufficient chakra control to use jutsu stood out as unusual.

Jared was honestly surprised to find most doctors and nurses came from the ranks of those who had insufficient chakra control to become ninja. But medical chakra required perfect control, which almost no one had naturally, and since until he came along no one outside of the Uzumaki knew how to develop better control, medical ninja outside of that clan were nearly as scarce as sages were in the mainline. And even then the only really good ones were Uzumaki, because only they had the seal knowledge to perform so many of the advanced medical procedures.

Since the Village of Hidden Whirlpool, where the Uzumaki lived, did not loan out their medical ninja to other countries, what few non-Uzumaki medical ninja existed were treated like kings, almost. Only the wealthy could afford them and they had waiting lists miles long.

For everyone else that left ordinary medicine, drugs and surgery, as the best available - only without modern technology this was pre-industrial revolution medicine. So amputations and poison and leeches and all sorts of other harebrained stuff as likely to kill you as not.

And wasn't that disturbing?

~Actually,~ Jared considered as he sucked down his lunch at one of those parties. ~Maybe that is not entirely negative, as some of the worst villains of the show were deeply into medicine. Orochimaru without his experiments would be a very different creature, and Kabuto would hardly exist as the show described him. While creatures like Danzo might not have survived his wounds, so died young instead of lingering like a cancer on this world.~

A couple of screaming children ran past, while Jared was having lunch.

~Although, speaking of medicine reminds me of specialties that does bring up the question: What am I going to do with myself?~ here the spy snorted, almost getting milk up his nose. ~Actually, that's the wrong question. I should not be thinking 'what ninja specialty would I like?' The main character of this show *wanted* to be throwing powerful ninjutsu around, and had the chakra reserves to be incredible at it, yet despite years of wanting, was still left as a taijutsu specialist - at which he sucked. So my wants very well might not enter into things.~

~So what abilities have I got, or could get for myself?~

And the answer for that was more than a little depressing, as the only training he could be certain of getting was stuff he'd seen on the show, and could thus give himself. But that just wasn't very much. It touched on a whole lot of subjects briefly, but not in any detail.

So following that trail led to being a Jack of All Trades But Master of None. Only having a broad range of skills all at a very low level was not very conducive to building up the kind of enormous power levels required for survival in a highly competitive environment like this where super ninja smashed mountains. About the best that could be said for it was it would set him up pretty well to receive any further training he got later.

He was getting his 'The Basics of How To Be A Ninja' lessons from his Nara minder, but while necessary that wasn't particularly noteworthy. Everyone he met would know those.

His chakra control and affinities were excellent, but again that merely left him well-placed to receive any further training later.

Luckily, despite the paucity of medical ninja on this world, thanks to the show Jared had seen some of the training for Mystic Palm and could probably figure out the rest himself, to a point. A few exploded fish would just mean sushi for dinner. Well, for the adults, anyway. He was still stuck on his all-milk diet and would be for a while to come yet. But any medical knowledge at all was better than none, and Mystic Palm was supposed to be foundational, a key skill to all medical ninja.

Well, he certainly hoped that was true, as he couldn't think of another medical jutsu he could train himself in. So if that would be all he had, it would be nice if it were useful.

Yamanaka techniques were all but a given, in that he could hardly imagine any circumstance where the clan chose not to teach those to him. It went without saying his clan would want every expert at those they could get, and he was obviously among the few with enough chakra control to handle them.

Speaking of chakra control, Jared's mother had shifted a bit and he was slipping down just a touch, making his lunch harder to reach and interrupting his assessment. However, it was automatic for him by now to try and use wall walking when he wanted to shift his body about somewhere.

But when he tried to stick a hand to his mother - it didn't stick.

Jared spend a long moment hungry and puzzled by that. The first was solved a by a little wail that woke his mother up and got her to shift him within reach of his meal again, but the second bugged him long after.

That was when he suffered another epiphany.

~As near as I've been able to determine, all chakra techniques work by inserting my chakra into something, then using that chakra to control it.~ he restated to himself what he already knew. ~And the easiest place to start a technique is inside of my body where my chakra is strongest.~

He placed a hand filled with chakra onto his mother's face as she held him during his burping and before being put down to nap.

No adhesion at all, he confirmed.

~But in mom's body HER chakra is strongest! And that's probably a general rule. Her body has been infused with chakra all of her life, so is incredibly attuned to her energy and no other,~ he realized. ~So I can't stick to her. My chakra doesn't take hold. Hers rejects it.~

After a further minute of thought and further experimentation, he admitted, ~Even her clothes are hard to get my chakra into. But then that's logical as people's auras naturally stick out a few inches from our bodies, so her clothes would naturally be saturated with her chakra.~

Well, at least that probably explained why ninja didn't go around just causing each other's heads to explode via direct chakra manipulation. If your body was a focus for your own chakra it would have an incredible advantage against any foreign chakra trying to invade it.

So no Vader Death Grips on this world. Burning each other to death would be much easier.

From what he could observe and remember, the standard forms of battle were along the lines of 'I use my chakra to manipulate something, and that something kills you', rather than 'I use my chakra to take control of your body directly and cause it to implode'.

The only people he was aware of who ever made it their business to put their chakra inside others' bodies were the Hyuga, with their Gentle Fist. And that was precision, needle-like strikes of highly concentrated chakra to specific, vulnerable points, and did not use Hyuga chakra to take control so much as disrupt the victim's ability to control their own body.

Nobody else used invasive chakra as a technique, at least not that he could recall.

~Then again, it's not as if I'd read all of the manga,~ the superspy admitted to himself. ~Rae Hino only collected so many, as she didn't particularly care for the characters. And once the beautiful Sailor Mars decided that the techniques shown in the series were of no use in helping her refine her own abilities, she stopped following it.~

The little redheaded superspy grinned. ~Serena was so disappointed. She'd liked reading about the main character almost as much as she loved stealing Rae's manga..~ He sighed. ~There are missions where I really miss my beloved Sailor Scouts - most any mission they aren't on with me, really.~

One thing he really missed was Sailor Moon's ability to heal anything. Which brought him back to the paucity of medicine on this world.

~Okay, so pursuit of a medical specialty will be done, insofar as I can take it. I might never learn anything beyond the simple mystic palm, but even that would be worth it.~ The baby concluded. ~Yeah. I don't know about anyone else, but knowing that I am about to enter a profession where people get injured, and knowing that my family, team and best friends could all get hurt, I'd like to know how to put them back together. I'd like that very much.~

Which brought the young superspy up short, as he made the realization that medical chakra was the one thing that was designed to enter another person's body and yet still function to control that body under the medic's direction.

Definitely a topic to pursue later, as not only would more medicine be useful but Kabuto did make great offensive use out of chakra scalpels.

The redhaired infant sighed. ~A great pity I don't know how to train for that technique. Or much of anything about their medicine but the mystic palm, really.~

Oh well, at least he knew if he got the mixture right his chakra would turn green.

~So back on topic. What CAN I train myself in? What techniques can I count on?~

Nothing he hadn't covered before, really. What he could do for himself would make it easy to receive future training, if such got offered, but wouldn't do for a technique base by itself.

~A depressing conclusion. Okay, so that's it for just what I could teach myself without help. Not a lot. Now what kind of a ninja would I be if I could choose to learn anything?~

Medicine was a given, for all of those reasons already stated. Seals also, as they seemed to be able to do anything. But he frankly had to admit that seals and medicine were almost certainty the two things most unlikely for him to have opportunity to learn.

So what else was there?

Most of what he'd seen in the show was high-powered martial arts action, only the superspy had to admit he would have no special advantage there and being mediocre did not appeal. Some would be required, it would be a weakness otherwise, but if he was going to excel as a ninja it was better to pick something he'd have a natural advantage at.

~Really, if I could pick anything, something like Temari's wind specialty sounds *very* attractive.~

Temari had been quite effective. Good enough that martial arts and weapon specialists hardly ever reached her. ~And since I am presently stuck in a ninja world, the idea that I could have a specialty that makes it difficult for other ninja to put knives in me sounds very appealing.~

And while a good martial artist could block weapons aimed towards himself, a master of wind techniques could not only do that, they could also deflect attacks away from their whole team. So if you cared for other people and wanted to protect them, wind was a good specialty to have.

He didn't have Gaara's sand, but wind mastery could be almost as good.

Jared was headed toward the affinity and control to be good at it. So becoming a wind master could serve him well. ~Then again, being honest here, since I have no guarantee of getting access to training in ANYTHING, it's probably best if I continue on as I have been doing and just practice every ninja skill I can.~

After all, look at Naruto's situation. With his ridiculous chakra capacity and wind affinity he was poised to be amazing at wind techniques... and they never let him. They kept him ignorant. First and last, his primary technique arsenal never really grew beyond his starting two: clone himself a bunch of times, and hit things with a big ball of chakra. The only use he ever got out of his wind affinity was to add an element to his Big Ball o' Chakra.

And that caused a realization that brought Jared up short, as that Big Ball o' Chakra aka the Rasengan, or Spiraling Sphere, was the only offensive jutsu he knew whose training all got spelled out in detail by the show - thus the only one he knew all of the training for.

Which meant he would be learning it as soon as he possibly could, of course.

OoOoO

A giant Akamichi with a rake over one shoulder stepped over the wall of the compound and into the back yard, reverting to normal size as he did so.

It was really quite amazing to watch those guys at work. Give one a rake with the proper tines and he goes giant and can plow a field with it in a few strokes. Give one a shovel and he goes giant, then each spadeful turns over so much dirt that in an hour or so you've got an entire irrigation canal or fish pond. Don't like the slope of that hill? Give an Akamichi a hoe and he'll fix it for you in a couple of minutes.

Those guys did most of the farming in town that way. Well, okay, they served as giant farm machinery making the work of the ordinary peasants faster and easier, but the principle was the same - without the Akamichi, Konoha wouldn't eat. Not this Konoha, anyway. They were too small to be self-sufficient, and most of the non-ninja working class had been drafted into servant roles supporting and making fancy things for the Uchiha.

This Konoha had a better silk industry than they did a farm infrastructure for feeding themselves in time of war. But the Uchiha didn't care. They had to have their fancy robes!

Placing aside his rake, the smiling Akamichi grinned and joined the party.

It was five days after Shikamaru's One Month Old party that they were attending Ino's (the clan heads really must have gone to some effort to time their children's births so precisely together, as five days was nothing. They could have, and come to think of it probably were, conceived on the same day - Ewww!).

Jared was in the yard, practicing with bamboo.

Bamboo was amazing in that it could grow six inches per day, no problem. That meant if you wanted to fill plants with chakra and 'listen' to how growth 'sounded', to see if you could get an idea of what plant growth felt like to chakra, bamboo was an excellent choice. Also flowers that closed up every night, and sunflowers that twisted to follow the sun. All of which, by convenient stroke of luck, were in the Yamanaka clan head's gardens.

While he was doing that, the infant superspy was also considering another experiment. Namely, could he teach his chakra control techniques to other kids?

After much contemplation he'd already reached the conclusion that he would be far safer if he shared his exercises around the trio of allied clans, as the more powerful and able his protectors were, the better they would be at keeping him safe.

Also, babies are quick to pick stuff up.

Jared spent all of that day going from child to child, accumulating chakra to his hands and then sticking those hands to his fellow babies out of all three clans. Then he'd crawl up walls, over furniture and down curtains and at the end crawl over those very same babies.

He nearly wept with joy when the first one started sticking to her favorite blanket.

It was Ino, oddly enough.

OoOoO

Having caused the clans another panic attack, it was natural, he supposed, that they be spending the night together, adults on guard with kunai in their hands while babies lay on top of each other in untidy piles in the one available crib.

Piles came to mind mostly because little Ino, the One Month Old girl, had started using her chakra to stick to everything, and exhausted herself badly enough she was so deeply asleep she was not waking up to complain about needing her diaper changed.

And it was a stinker.

Though troubled by the scent, Jared didn't feel he could do anything about it. All of his skill at cleaning his own diapers relied on the fact that as his filth, it was filled with his chakra, and that was something he had control over.

Still, Ino had on a truly nasty gasser, and though the other babies were sleeping through it, Jared couldn't.

The problem was, if he wanted to do something about it, he'd have to send out enough of his chakra to cancel hers just to reach zero. Then he'd have to fill it up with his own all over again so he could have the control needed to dispose of the lump of waste, and frankly that whole procedure sounded like it would be murderously expensive in chakra.

He didn't even know if he had enough to complete her diaper cleaning, and as much as knocking himself out from chakra exhaustion appealed as a way to escape the smell, he didn't want to get halfway through having her waste crawl to the diaper bucket before he passed out, leaving the lump of foulness out in the middle of the crib where some baby would inevitably roll over it, spreading that filthiness around until it got on every baby.

Lightning the gasses on fire granted momentary relief, but only for so long, and did nothing to solve the core problem.

Jared sighed. The problem lay in overcoming her chakra in that muck, as if it was infused with his own it would be easy enough to animate it and get rid of it. His own parents hadn't had to change his diaper in a month.

Actually... the boy blinked. Chakra draining was something seen frequently enough in the show. One of the legendary swords did it, Infinite Armor and both kinds of chakra armor from Snow country all did it. Orochimaru and that guy from the chunin exams whose name no one bothers to remember did it, and if he recalled from one of the databooks well enough, both what Orochimaru did, as well as Mr Nameless did was specifically described as a technique.

Well, if it was a technique, then perhaps Jared could learn it? In fact, he even recalled some details about the spin of someone's chakra being important, and that to absorb it you just had to draw the chakra someone else had molded inside yourself, then reverse the spin, and it would disperse into its separate mental and physical energies and you could then add those to your own.

Oh, and physical contact was required in all cases he could think of.

~Well, [Expletive Deleted]! I'm a baby, I'm not allowed squeamishness!~ Jared rammed his hand down the back of Ino's diaper and began to get to work on assuming control of the chakra infused lump he found there.

~And the odd thing is,~ he thought, trying desperately to distract himself from the depths of embarrassment this activity caused his adult mind. ~This is probably as close to the ideal circumstances to learn chakra draining as you're ever going to get. I mean, how often in life are you going to come across an undefended lump of someone else's chakra just lying around for you to practice on?~

Of course, it went without saying this was another of those activities he was never going to admit to anybody.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Okay, this is probably the last of the extended baby periods and potty humor. I hope, anyway.

Food pills exist in the show that are supposed to grant a ninja energy for three days, and they gobble them like candy every time they need a recharge during a fight, it seems. But the Akamichi clan are all about food, to the point of wearing the symbol for food on their clothing, so if they'd contributed any secret knowledge to the village as they joined it, how to make those pills seemed like a pretty good fit.

Everything got developed by somebody. No matter how common something is, at some point someone had to be the first to create it. So, SOMEBODY invented the Academy techniques in the show, and so on, and it just seemed nice to spread that credit around.

Besides, the Senju clan had to be doing something right if they were the ones everyone called on every time someone had to fight the Uchiha, so having them be the ones to invent the means ninja use to move at impossible speeds seemed entirely appropriate.


	4. Chapter 4

Whirlpool Sky  
by Skysaber

Chapter Four

OoOoO

Choji's One Month Old party was held eight days after Ino's. That put all three clan heirs being born within two weeks of each other, so... yeah. The clan heads really went all out to time their births close together.

You don't get that kind of coordination by accident. Good friends are usually lucky to have their kids born in the same year as each other.

Jared continued to blow all development curves out of the water. Ordinarily, it's a good rule of thumb to expect a baby's first word, first step and first tooth to all be closely associated with their first birthday. Development schedules do vary by about six months either way, but on average those events all happen roughly around the same time.

Except in the case of Interdimensional Superspies, of course.

Jared's first word was spoken at that party, and was actually two words. It was the directive, "Mamma, Stick!" delivered while in his mother's arms and demonstrating the wall-crawling technique to her skin so she could feel how it worked.

This had already been amazingly effective at teaching other children how to duplicate the trick. Although perhaps this would have been more effective delivered at a different time. As it was he had been wildly successful, beyond all expectations, in getting the other kids at these parties to adopt wall-crawling, as at the time he spoke his first words his mother was too busy being agog, staring amazed and wide-eyed at children defying gravity all around her by climbing up walls, furniture, and across ceilings.

Actually, even Jared did not anticipate being that successful at showing off to other kids and getting them to follow his example, although perhaps he should have, as chakra was a natural energy on this world and babies were SMART when it came to figuring things out!

They had to be, they had all of that learning to walk and speak and other things to be handling during that period.

A bit too successful, all things considered, as the adults were panicking. Really, what was their problem?

Oh.

Yeah, it would be a bit hard to hide this from their overlords, wouldn't it?

OoOoO

Yumi Uzumaki panted as she finished escaping from her pursuers.

That Uchiha with the Magnekyo had given her a nasty scare, but apparently he'd just been bluffing her with a Disguise technique. It was a cheap trick, but things like that sometimes worked. Far too often in her opinion, really.

Luckily the man had not dodged her reflexive exploding kunai to the face.

After that it had been a long chase through cliff and hill. When Konoha had moved from its first location they had hidden up in some very isolated mountain passes to rebuild. Too bad for them when the Third Shinobi War rolled around those twisty passes turned out to be strategically placed for army movement between far too many nations, and thus became a convenient battleground fought over for the entire length of the war.

The land still bore scars from that.

Still, mountain gorges once isolated and unused had been opened by that conflict, shaped by earth using ninja into roads fit for the passage of large armies, that after the conflict had proved to be ideal for the passage of merchants and trade - which was all too typical for Konoha, weird combinations of both the best and worst possible luck.

They went to hide in a hard to reach corner, and the world literally built roads to their door. They barely survive, and when the smoke clears they find they are on a rich trade route.

Their luck was just odd like that.

Making her way to a hidden grotto, Yumi decided to use one of the less-secret of the circle transport rings the Uzumaki had riddled this area with. Racing up a waterfall to a cave and squirming uphill in a narrow tunnel to a dry area behind she stopped in an unmarked spot and did not even glance at the surface holding the seal array for fear of being observed.

~Let's see,~ Yumi did some quick calculations based on position of the sun and the time she knew it to be before having started that botched infiltration. The seal arrays her family used for transport were based not only on blood and family chakra signature, but on a seal unique to each person and a series of rotating codes that changed literally every hour.

You could never be too paranoid when a world full of ninja really were out to get you - and there was nothing most nations wouldn't do to get a hold of the Uzumaki family secrets.

There came a flash of light as seals painted on the rock ceiling activated under the thick layer of smoke deposits from deliberately laid campfires after those seals had been written. They were virtually impossible to view without cleaning the soot off, and since water-soluble inks had been used, any attempt to clean them would also destroy them.

Really, you just couldn't be too paranoid. Every third seal in the array was also a dummy that if copied, well, bad things would happen. And half of the *real* seals in that setup didn't glow when activated, thanks in turn to other seals.

Had she mentioned that other ninja had been trying to steal their secrets for a while?

Disappearing in that flash of light, Yumi then appeared at a secondary transport ring noplace in particular, with no other escape routes and that would kill her if not activated in less than a minute, using a completely different set of rotating passcodes than the first stage transport rings. Quickly performing the necessary technique to activate it, she disappeared in a final flash to her third and true destination - a stronghold on Uzumaki territory where if she showed up with unexpected company, or in disguise, or drugged, hypnotized, under possession, illusion or a dozen other things they had seals in place to check for, the guards stationed there would react immediately to lock down her movement, and investigate further.

And if combat resulted, seals were already in place not even a Tailed Beast could survive.

The depressing thing was they had already been used more than once. Ninja were sneaky, and it was amazing how many times they'd almost penetrated the Uzumaki homeland.

Her family wouldn't ever leave if it was not far more dangerous NOT to know what was going on in the outside world, than it was to send out the occasional patrols or spy missions. And crystal spying balls had limited range.

Getting the 'all clear' she passed by the guards and sentinels, traps and active defenses, hardly paying any attention or heed to them as by this point they were all there to keep her safe, a safety she'd desperately craved while out on a mission around Konoha, and it was a great relief to her to feel it again, so she could relax.

Of course, next came her debriefing.

Slogging over to the mission desk, looking forward to her bath afterward, Yumi took her signal from the chunin on desk duty and went to the appropriate room, where her thoughts on a long soak in a hot tub were shattered when she saw who was there to debrief her.

"Princess Kushina!"

"Now, now," the redhaired daughter of the clan head waved her towards a chair, hiding a little giggle at the greeting. "I'm still just a jonin, and it's time to debrief you. Can you report a successful mission?"

"No, your highness," Yumi shook her head, before clenching her fists with energy and rising partway out of her seat (she couldn't remember sitting?). "The patrols were too dense. I couldn't get past them, so we do *not* have a new transport ring at the desired location. But, on falling back to one of the rings around Konoha, I sensed an Uzumaki being held prisoner there. I tried a rescue..." here Yumi hung her head, "And also didn't succeed."

"That is very unfortunate," Kushina tapped her lip (unfortunate? That doesn't seem like a word Princess Kushina would say) before rushing on, "However, we're going to have to put you on another assignment. We need you to develop a sealing technique that can be used to steal bloodlines."

Yumi screwed up her face in confusion. "You want me to complete the Chimera technique? Wasn't that research abandoned for a reason?"

The princess smiled, almost too wide, too fast, but caught it quickly so Yumi couldn't be sure of having seen it at all. "Yes, complete the Chimera technique. I'm afraid that, for reasons I can't go into right now, our necessity far outweighs the risks."

"Okay," Yumi sighed. This was one of the things that sucked about being ninja, all too often no one could tell you why you were supposed to do something. Frankly, it sucked. "I'll get right on it, after my bath. But you know it'll take months?"

"Take all the time you need," Princess Kushina smiled as Yumi left the room.

Outside of the illusion, Inoichi wiped the beaded sweat from his brow and removed his hand from the unconscious Uzumaki girl's face. "Well, that's got it."

For the first time in months of trying, the illusion world the mind specialist had been trying to build for the kunoichi had managed to pass with few enough logical inconsistencies for the girl held in a coma to accept and begin the work they wanted - at least for now.

Inoichi was still wiping his head. "It'll probably collapse when she gets to her home and we don't know what to reinforce concerning her memories there. But for now at least she has accepted the dream world, and agreed to work on the seal."

The blind Uchiha whose unseeing white eyes had once been the Magnekyo that had captured the woman, and put him in charge of the whole activity nodded gruffly. "I will report this progress to the Hokage."

Inoichi nodded, hardly noticing as the well-dressed jonin left, guided by the hand of a child. Reinforcing a dream world so it seemed real was exhausting, as was cherry picking enough images out of chaotic memory to keep up with a subject mind's perceptions, to say nothing of erasing her memory and starting the illusion over when she caught him making mistakes.

And since he did not dare insert his mind into the dream world with her, as that would tip her off to this all being a setup to deceive her, everything had to be done by remote control, which left him only the dimmest impressions of what she was seeing or doing, so multiplied his mistakes.

Frankly, it was amazing they were getting anywhere under those restrictions.

Beside the Yamanaka clan head, a highly placed Nara woman, one of the few high enough up in rank to be trusted with such secret assignments, used her shadow to take hold on the unconscious Uzumaki.

Two tables were laid in the secret bunker. The Nara woman would sit at one, then eat and drink, while the body of the unconscious woman she controlled would also sit and eat at the other. After that would be a visit to the bathroom for both of them.

In this way they hoped to keep their coma patient alive, hopefully until they had the results their Hokage demanded.

Not that Inoichi was hopeful about the matter. As he had tried several times to explain, his clan's techniques were not designed for this. The Uzumaki woman had complete mental blocks in place over all of her clan's secrets, and that was it. He couldn't delve into her memory for them, and had no other techniques to get them.

But the Hokage's demands had been very forceful and specific. He had heard, from no one knew what source, that seals could be made to do anything. Now they had an Uzumaki seal mistress captive, it was the Yamanaka's job to get her to divulge a seal to do the one thing a Sharingan couldn't, namely: steal bloodlines.

It was their Fifth Hogake's hope that with such a seal the last limits on an Uchiha's powers would be removed, and they could at last retake control of the Elemental Countries and rule over all, just as they felt destiny demanded.

Inoichi privately wished the Hokage would choke on a fruit pit and die, and take all of his arrogant, Sharingan-wielding relatives with him.

Clan Head was once a respected position, but in Konoha the job felt more like "Chief Slave", with the rest of your clan held as hostages unless you succeeded at whatever impossible whim their Hokage came up with this time.

He hated being told to make grass grow when his only tools were a pair of tweezers and boiling hot lead - not a grass seed in sight. But the Hokage had made his demands clear, and his whole clan would be made to suffer if, or rather when, he failed. So he was doing his best to form imitation grass blades out of lead with his tweezers and hope it came close enough.

Inoichi would not forget the impossible task set on a whim whose failure had resulted in the Sarutobi clan being punished with destruction.

OoOoO

On the plus side for the Uchiha, with medicine the way it was, transplanting their eyes into anyone else was in the "you're kidding, right?" level of medical marvel for most people. So no one was after them to cut them up for their eyes.

On the minus side for everyone, however, in the absence of good medicine flu season was a little more than a minor blip on the radar. Disease outbreaks killed. There was, outside of Konoha, an old hospital - although 'pest house' was the old nickname for hospitals, and in this case might be more accurate, as you were more likely to get sick from going there than to get better, even if you were sick already you'd likely catch something else.

Medical ninja being so scarce, their care effectively did not exist for the common man, and Pre-Industrial Revolution medicine was worth bupkiss in stopping plague outbreaks. So it was left to the ill to get better on their own. The best the doctors could do was to provide quarantine to the afflicted so their infections did not spread. Admittedly, they were pretty good at that, but it was cold comfort to the sick and dying.

Small outbreaks would see the victims cared for by their families in their homes. This gave the best chance of recovery. But when outbreaks got too bad the sick were bundled off to this place to be isolated until they either recovered on their own, or died.

Because of the very real danger of spreading infections, this hospital was situated in an out of the way box canyon, as far away from anything important as possible, lest anything the patients had there spread. It was not even staffed year round, because anyone healthy who stayed there too long had a tendency to get sick themselves. So it was kept empty until there was an emergency and it was needed, and then run by volunteers.

Going there was more often than not a one-way trip, regardless of whether you went as a patient or caregiver, and everyone knew it.

But, as the Nara clan were quick to deduce, a place nobody wants to go makes for the perfect place to hide.

Since they did not want to actually go to the hospital, catch infections and die, they enlisted the aid of the Akamichi and converted another box canyon very close to the hospital into a mock-up of the original, identical at first glance. They sculpted the ravines to look the same, built identical seeming buildings, and put up all of the same signs and landscaping. The only difference was this had never been inhabited by sick people, so was safe from infecting the chakra-using children the trio of clans wanted to hide.

At a glance from a distance, which was all anyone who wanted to stay safe from illness was going to do, it was impossible to tell one hospital from another. Everything was banked on the fact that the Uchiha did not care for the welfare of their servant clans, and so would pay minimal attention at best to a large batch of sick members being sent off to quarantine. And they had never once inspected the hospital itself - even when an Uchiha was sent there.

Disease being one of the few things that a Sharingan did nothing to protect against, severe illness was something of a minor phobia among the Uchiha clan, and they did their best to pretend that it never happened, and could not exist, all the while staying as far away from any source of disease as they could.

Paranoid of disease but without an understanding of germ theory, this had grown over the years into a lot of minor superstitions, such as never starting to eat a fish from the left.

So by building a false hospital and raising the chakra using children there, the clans planned to escape the Uchiha noticing anything odd about their offspring before they had learned to conceal their new chakra powers - and seeing as how children are lousy at keeping any kind of secrets, it would be years before any of them could return.

Basically, these children would already be ninja before any of them saw their original homes again, and that included both Jared and Ino, arriving in carts filled with a few supplies, and with a few adult families to oversee them.

Their mothers came with their nursing children, along with Jared's Nara minder to help out with the two of them.

OoOoO

In the land of Waterfall, greatest of the Shinobi Nations, a couple of massive fellows leapt across a pond in pursuit of some mysterious mission or other.

In their wake, an old and simple peasant looked up from the rice paddy he had worked all of his long life, wondering what it must be like to be a ninja - never knowing that in a different timestream he had been known as Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Third Hokage.

OoOoO

Several months later near the heart of summer, dozens of windows rattled open one by one, propelled either by fire or lightning chakra working on their iron frames, while light bulbs flickered on around the building and wind chakra was hard at work parting the curtains and tying them aside using ribbons so the pure, sweet morning air could enter unrestrained.

Meanwhile Jared was already hard at work changing sixty diapers at once. First send out a chakra string to connect to each, drain the chakra present in those waste-filled diapers, and while those wastes animated to go dispose of themselves in holes earth chakra was even then digging in the back yard, use the surplus energy to generate more strings to serve as substitute hands to change the babies into fresh diapers.

Water was leaping out of pipes to fill tubs, while fire chakra heated them for baths. More water was filling pots and pans in the kitchen, where wind chakra was blowing about picking up carefully measured amounts of rice and dumping that in water to boil for breakfast (the rice having been measured out by hand before this).

It was exhausting, yet exhilarating work.

~Truly, Ranma had the right idea. ANYTHING can be training!~ the young superspy about to turn six months old yawned as he began the day - his fourth month in the fake hospital.

He'd had a great initial advantage with using earth, water and wind based chakras because he'd found those substances already filled with the energy of his own body, so they were easy to use and adapt to. However, he had surged ahead, overcoming his weakness in the other two primary chakra elements when he'd dipped back into his science education and realized that fire was just highly agitated molecules, at which his body as a living thing was a good but slightly less extreme example. It was a bit counter-intuitive using his own body heat as a source of fire, but really any spark or ember would do. You just take it and magnify it and apply it to fuel and Whoosh! Fire. Even so small a source of heat could ignite a raging inferno. It was really just the same principle at work as using a magnifying glass and sunlight to start a blaze, only in this case it was chakra serving as the magnifying glass.

Once he'd made that realization, it was as if he was carrying fire with him everywhere. And lightning was just electrical impulses, and those were used to communicate along nerves. So really, the same principle was at work. He had a little within him whatever he was doing, and from the smallest initial spark it was easy for chakra to make more at need.

Having found all five elements within his own body he was racing ahead in mastering them.

Motivation leads to greatness.

Far too many people just want to be Joe Ordinary, even on a ninja world. Jared's mind, on the other hand, got caught up in the excitement. What if you could do the sort of things they show in that series? What would you do with them?

He wanted to have tons of minor jutsu that he'd invented himself. I mean, the show had kids practicing stupid stuff like leaf floating to learn chakra control. How much more eagerly would someone learn it if it was useful?

Take, for example, basic water manipulation. Say you want to learn how to control water, so they stick you with a bowl and tell you to swirl it with your chakra to create a current. Big deal! Boredom sets in before most students have even begun. However! If you take something that you're going to be doing every day, then turn it into a chakra control exercise, you benefit two ways. One, you'd be doing that anyway, and two, you might even do it better with chakra!

So, again on water manipulation, invent the "Scrub my own back" jutsu for use in the tub. It's hard to do without help, or a tool or something, so make a chakra control exercise out of it! Then once you can do that much with chakra, try taking a bath without using your own hands at all! Wash your hair, scrub your feet, take care of everything, and then soak in the time you save.

He'd done that much already, and was planning in the future, once he had teeth, to brush his teeth the same way. Now suddenly it's not inconvenient to do after every meal. Just a quick three seconds at a drinking fountain, then spit!

Ninja on missions live life on the run, traveling light. It's hard to carry everything you need to camp, take care of yourself, and especially fight, with only a few pounds of gear - especially on this world, where they lacked sealing scrolls.

So Jared's rule of thumb was to find ways to do whatever you would ordinarily be doing, only do them with chakra instead, on the belief that you'll not only be happier with life (you don't have to carry around as many supplies if you can do things with chakra instead) but your skills with chakra would improve, just because you are A) using it all of the time, and B) when you are washing your hair with chakra you CARE about control more than when you are swirling water around in a bowl, as you don't want to yank on it, or tangle it up or miss spots or whatever.

Heat your food the same way. Old world has a microwave? You have chakra. Heat or cool bath water with it. And that old "stare at the bowl and make currents in the liquid?" in cooking, we call that stirring. Wind also cuts in the Naruto world, and what do you do with vegetables when you are preparing them? Most of the time, they need to be cut into smaller shapes. Make that a chakra control exercise, and you'll be practicing it enough that eventually you'll excel at wind manipulation.

To say nothing of the work saved when you've been doing it a while and can just touch a vegetable and it falls apart, diced or sliced or ground or whatever the recipe calls for. As a ninja you'll be spending the effort to master your chakra control exercises no matter what. You might as well get a useful tool out of all of that work.

Oh, and cooking? Don't forget, if you're in this world and have a brain, you're probably a ninja. That means living substantial chunks of your life out on patrol, on missions, or whatever. It's either learn how to cook for yourself, or live off of ration bars for the rest of your life. Jared believed in cooking, and not only because he could tweak it into a thousand little chakra control exercises, learn how to be more familiar with knives, and all that good ninja stuff, but because when you are trying to build relationships with people nothing says "I care for you" like cooking their meals occasionally.

Jared had started out just wanting to slice a radish, because it was bigger than a leaf and leaves had gotten boring. But, once sliced, the potential there had been obvious, and now he was cooking for all of the adults at the false hospital!

Sewing is also an important and useful skill, and nothing would teach you control with chakra strings better than just manipulating a needle and thread with them. Sewing starts simply, just like everything else, with the basics like closing up holes in clothes you don't want there, ripped knees and whatnot. Then as skill grows it goes on to minor alterations to make them look just a bit better, or be more comfortable, and it winds up in complicated lace patterns and embroidery.

Jared could not picture any Suna puppeteer having greater control of their chakra threads than someone who could embroider with it, as there is literally no end to the complicated patterns people have dreamed up for their embroidery - and it goes back to the general rule: if you are going to practice a ninja skill at all, use it doing something useful for more than just practice.

Everyone needs clothes, so everyone needs cloth, and so weaving is fundamental to human existence. But the kind of silk patterns needed for the kind of cloth used in kimonos rival some of the more difficult embroidery patterns for their complexity. But if you want those clothes, somebody's got to do it, so why *not* do it with chakra? After starting small, like weaving basketry out of reeds and stuff, working on up through rough cloth like burlap used in sacks.

Jared had already gotten quite good on his reed baskets, and flax was easy to grow, so linen was looking like a likely candidate for his next stage of cloth weaving via chakra strings.

Everything you could do with chakra could be tweaked to a chakra exercise, if you had a mind to it, and humans need so many tools for daily living that you could substitute!

The child superspy had originally been quite embarrassed by his "clean my bottom" jutsu, but on further reflection he'd bet any ninja would like it for when they are out on a mission and there is no toilet paper. Wouldn't you?

And earth manipulation? Most people just didn't understand how much human effort got spent moving dirt around, but it's absolutely essential to farming, mining, construction, and all sorts of other things that themselves are key to human existence. Everything you might want, from a nice house to a computer to textbooks, generally started with someone with a shovel, or more advanced tools that basically do the same thing. Somebody had to dig the foundation for that house, mine those minerals that eventually became your computer, and trees for paper were generally grown on farms anymore.

The ability to move earth about with chakra short-circuits an awful lot of backbreaking effort to get those things. Jared had already put in a basement under the hospital to run Roman style central heating.

Most of the great advances in history were brought about by someone taking a look at something common and accepted, and just thinking in different ways so they came at it from a different perspective.

And BOY! Did coming from another universe grant one a different perspective!

Just what was considered basic education in one place was often as not wholly different from the basics everywhere else. Here it was chakra, fighting and throwing that were the 'must have' skills for anyone educated, where back home math and eventually science had been emphasized.

And all of that basic science education he'd picked at home proved to be surprisingly useful on this world. Take, for example, his need for an electrical device he could practice lightning chakra on. Well, one good piston in a tube and a couple of one-way valves and you had a pump. Attach said pump to a glass jar (it had held jam), pump all of the air out, and you had a vacuum. Throw in one carbonized hair, two wire leads, seal the open end off and you had a crude but effective light bulb.

There were loads of improvements that could be made, a better vacuum, tungsten for the filament, etc, but the end product of even his first, crude efforts was plenty good enough for practicing lightning chakra on. You apply a current, the filament glows. You don't, it doesn't. One of the best and easiest ways to detect if you've got chakra generating electricity or not.

He'd produced them by the dozens for the Ino-Shika-Cho clans to practice on. Lightning chakra was actually an ideal affinity for most Yamanaka, as their clan techniques were all based on the brain, which used electricity to function. So a lightning affinity made that easier.

Jared was making light bulbs as simply another chakra exercise these days. After half a year of dedicated practice his air manipulation was good enough to generate a sufficient vacuum all on its own (with half an hour of work), and he could use earth chakra to form molten glass into shape. Heating that glass took time however, as 2,700 degrees F was not cheap or easy to produce, even under ideal conditions in the middle of an appropriately built blast furnace.

Good air flow and clay walls to reflect the heat back inside were the keys. But glassblowing, the tools and techniques, had existed almost unchanged from the early days of the Roman Empire. And light bulbs (even if their only use was as training tools) were only one of the many advances his previous education made available to him!

Even the most basic knowledge of science and history was proving to be invaluable here.

For example, locally, Crystal Release was thought to be a very rare bloodline, but Jared had already begun playing around with crystal generation. In truth the principle for generating artificial gemstones was very simple: get yourself a small chip of the gem type you want to grow, heat it up very hot (the temperatures sounded very high, but could be reached by ordinary welding equipment) and apply a steady drip of water carrying the minerals you need to match the gem. So, carbon for diamonds. It was all very straightforward. The only reason it wasn't better known was the value of gemstones would plummet if people knew how easy it was to make their own.

So all Jared really needed to arrange was to grab a chip of gemstone (the hardest part, in his circumstances) and arrange for some very high heat, and a mineral water drip.

Using fire chakra alone to get that hot was out of the question for now. But there he could cheat and use wind chakra to collect and manipulate the necessary gasses for welding, and burn them with fire chakra to get the heat he wanted. After that, it was just a matter of adding the minerals and letting the crystal matrix grow. Water could be used for a delivery medium, but he found earth natured chakra worked just as well, actually better as that also permitted him to guide the crystal growth to achieve whatever formation, color and clarity he liked.

To get the oxygen and acetylene for his welding gasses in the first place, well, the oxygen was easily obtained by pumping electricity into water and splitting that into oxygen and hydrogen, then collecting the gasses - which also made for a great exercise for his lightning chakra. And acetylene had been in production by some of the rudest, simplest, crudest and poorly educated people in the world since the 19th century.

It had some inherent dangers, but hey! This was a NINJA world! if you weren't prepared to accept a little risk, you should seriously consider another profession.

So Jared spent some time growing his own gemstones, mostly as a chakra exercise. Nor was that the only bit of locally held conventional wisdom he was defying.

Around here Ice manipulation was felt to be a bloodline. Jared hadn't believed it. Ice was only cold water, and plenty of people in the show had used ice techniques, from Kakashi to those ninja from Snow country. So at three months old he'd developed his air and water chakras to what he'd felt was a sufficient level, then dedicated himself to solve the problem.

Well, he'd found the bloodline concept partially correct.

Science told him that ice was just cold water, and coolness was merely reduced agitation of the molecules. At first he'd tried using fire natured chakra to draw the heat out of something, only that hadn't worked so well. So he'd approached it the traditional way. Various Naruto sourcebooks and materials said that ice was a mixture of both air and water natured chakras. Well, he could use water chakra to condense moisture out of the air wherever he wanted it, and using air to wick the heat off froze it down just fine, so he could produce ice no problem.

Making ice was not the problem. Manipulating it was. Once ice solidified his water natured manipulation lost hold over it, and his air had never had it. He'd tried earth, because it was a solid, but that hadn't worked either.

So, yes, an entirely different nature of chakra was required to manipulate ice. That wasn't even the problem, as the show proved that anyone could manipulate ice that was already there. He'd broken that problem in weeks, and started to develop purely ice natured chakra that was capable of manipulating frozen water.

The problem was the bloodline really existed, and it really did do some important stuff. Jared couldn't even really figure out what, but ice users with the real bloodline could get their ice to do impossible things, like form mirrors that were immune to fire and hang suspended in mid-air without visible means of support.

And do so effortlessly.

That's without even mentioning really wigged out stuff where they could turn into a reflection of themselves in those ice mirrors and leap around at improbable speeds, appearing to be everywhere at once.

Or, and here was the really tricky part, if ice was merely cold water and cold just reduced agitation of those molecules, how on EARTH did anyone get constructs made of ice, like wolves or dragons or narwhales and such, moving around so quickly and adroitly? They'd have to be continually bleeding off the heat generated by that movement, and ice was a solid, so getting it to bend and flex at all, not to mention fast enough to catch ninja...

Yeah.

No, those with the bloodline had an instinctive understanding of their element that Jared had not been able to duplicate, and science was no help to him in figuring out how. They simply performed feats he had no idea how to match or recreate. It felt cumbersome and weird to even try.

Which is not to say that he'd stopped using ice natured chakra. It was enormously useful to be able to cool things down at need, to say nothing of creating ice chunks for primitive cold boxes so his family, then clan, then the extended clans of the whole Ino-Shika-Cho trio could preserve their food better.

He also discovered he liked to ice-skate. So the ice chakra got used for all sorts of things, it was just too cumbersome, crude and slow to see any use in combat.

The same with magnetism, really.

Now come on, who, having seen an X-men movie or two, *wouldn't* want to be able to do even just a fraction of what Magneto does in them? And the movie version of that character was significantly less powerful than the one in the comic books. What's more, magnetic manipulation did exist in the Naruto universe, with a lot of the same tricks and results.

That was just too tempting to ignore. After all, anyone from a modern world knows about electromagnets. You move electricity in the right way, it creates magnetism. Or you move magnets in the right way, it creates electricity. And he already HAD lightning natured chakra mastered by the point he'd started tackling magnetism. So it ought to be easy, right?

Well, no. It turned out not to be, for all of the same reasons that ice wasn't. Sure, fine, with his science education he could create magnetic fields, study them, even get a sense for what set them apart and start generating that nature of chakra.

But it was like using one's feet to type while blind-folded. Clunky, clumsy, required way too much concentration for it even to work at all, was depressingly prone to errors, and after all was said and done it was just way too slow to be useful in a fight.

He had not abandoned the skill of making magnetic chakra. For one thing it was enormously useful, as you apply a strong magnetic field even briefly to ferrous metals or certain rare earths and you've got yourself a permanent magnet. Mount those properly and spin some copper wires through the magnetic fields rapidly and you've got yourself a basic electrical generator - which not only opened up vast possibilities for training lightning chakra, but gave you another use for those light bulbs, ie, actually producing light.

At night they were lit only in the basement though, with thick curtains hung over doors so no light could possibly be seen from outside. Everybody lived in fear of the Uchiha finding out what was going on.

Jared had also tried Wood and Crystal techniques with even more limited success. While he could 'listen' with his chakra to a tree, or a lump of salt crystal, and even generate some of what he thought was the same frequency of chakra, he had yet to be perfectly successful at anything he'd tried with it.

Well, he could get flowers to bloom and fruit to stay fresh longer. That was something. He could also get crystals to condense out of urine, which was how they'd originally discovered potassium, and potassium was useful for making matches. So he wasn't complaining.

But he also wasn't going to approach an enemy ninja on the field of battle and ask him to pee into a bucket, either.

Jared was just preparing the next difficult and dangerous stage of chakra development, cracking some eggs into a bowl using each of the five elemental chakras in turn, when his morning routine got interrupted by him being swept up in his mother's enthusiastic hug.

"Oh, my son, my son, my darling little Sage Child! You gave me jutsu!"

His mother poured all of her love into a kiss on his cheek while Jared's mind whirled. It even took him a moment to identify what she was talking about, as he'd been trying since that first demonstration four months ago at Choji's party to get her to start practicing chakra with him, to virtually no success. He'd done everything he could think of to convince her, all to no avail, until last month when he'd simply gone on strike, refusing to do any more helping around the fake hospital until she gave in and practiced.

Since there were few adults here, as the clans could only spare so many, and Jared's little contributions out of his chakra control practice amounted to rather a lot of help with cleaning and changing babies, as well as cooking, dusting and other chores, the other parents there had seen their work loads almost double.

Rather a lot of peer pressure got focused on his mother from the other parents after that, and she had at last caved and pretended to go along as her redhaired son attempted to get her to do stupid or insane things like float leaves or stick to walls with chakra.

It was only...

~Oh!~

Jared blinked, feeling somewhat silly inside of his mother's hug, all the while realizing the reason his mom had been so resistant was she'd always believed it was impossible for a person born without the ability to manipulate chakra to learn how, so she'd always viewed those lessons as pointless for someone like her.

Not seeing the point, she hadn't tried, until he'd literally forced the point and MADE her! And even then her participation had been half-hearted. It hadn't been until yesterday, when she'd started...

~Oh!~

Again.

~Yeah, last night the clan heads visited, Inoichi among them. They'd talked to mom, and she would have demonstrated her new ability to use chakra, painstakingly clawed up from nothing.~

Ample demonstrations of chakra energy had been sufficient to get other children practicing all sorts of things along with him in experimenting with chakra.

With the adults? Not so much.

His mom was the first, and it had taken much hand-holding every step along the way, applying chakra to her skin so she could grow used to the feel of it. Getting her to move it around at all had been the hardest part, and not something accomplished without much tears. But in the end they'd gotten her to float a leaf for the first time yesterday.

~And thus, the visit from the clan heads, who almost certainly tested her, and ended up declaring her fit to learn the clan techniques. Something mom had never been ready for until now.~

Yeah. He could see that kind of switch getting this reaction.

Then the boy was almost paralyzed with wonder as another thought struck him. ~If they judged mom suitable to learn the clan jutsu, yet there aren't any new adults around here to teach her, could that mean they might have left mom SCROLLS?!~

If so, then maybe he could pilfer a look at them.

And then he had a second electrifying thought, as Ameko, the Nara girl who had been his babysitter, tutor and constant companion since he was one month old had also been dragged into those adult chakra lessons. And if they'd cleared mom to learn techniques, then maybe his Nara babysitter had gotten hold of a scroll or two of her own family techniques?

Just as his mom set her wriggling child down, Ameko zoomed into the room and snatching him up, kissing the child on his cheek while declaring with tears streaming down her own face, "Oh, you beautiful boy! You gave me the shadows!"

A smile spread across the boy child's face, sure she had received scrolls too. Perhaps a peek couldn't hurt?

But even as he considered it, his babysitter had swept him off to training. Ever since he could walk (at three months) the start of every day had been a workout regime. So as his mother and other children's parents took over cooking breakfast, Jared was swept out to the yard along with the older children and put through an exhaustive regime of stretches, warm up exercises, and martial arts practice.

It was aimed at children several times his size and with far more developed muscles, so Jared had to use chakra enhancement to his body just to survive.

There wasn't any animosity to this, in fact his teacher complimented him all of the time, it's just that being so far beyond the development curve meant he was at a great physical disadvantage when faced with exercise routines built for children much older.

Admittedly, ninja liked starting training as early as possible, so "as soon as the child can walk" was pretty standard as far as clans go to start preparing them for their future lives, and it all started soft and low with bending and stretches making up most of it. And his babysitter watched Jared pretty carefully, especially at first, to make sure he didn't overdo it. But once he'd started to keep up, they more or less expected that he would continue to keep up. It didn't stop it from being just on the edge of what his little body could handle, even with the full aid and assistance of his chakra.

It was more than a little humbling, after all of his success at chakra manipulation, to be on the weak side of barely adequate when it came to something like this - as far too many long or medium range specialists died when a taijutsu expert got in close - as many taijutsu experts trained specifically to do against ninjutsu types.

Ok, so he had a weakness. That was concerning, but what could he do?

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Early technologies are something of a hobby of mine, as is history. I skipped out on a lot of the detail, as I figured people didn't want to hear about mixing lime and coke to get calcium carbide for the acetylene, nor the exact details of just how you get a furnace hot enough to make molten glass.

On crystal generation: Creation of backyard diamonds has been done very successfully by high school girls in backyard sheds using their father's welding setup - and not just a little, either. Hundreds of carets worth, that she'd then had cut and set as jewelry she'd worn to her own graduation to the amazement of her friends.

That the jeweler who did the cutting and setting did so in return for some portion of the gems says her quality was not too shabby, either.


	5. Chapter 5

Whirlpool Sky  
by Skysaber

Chapter Five

OoOoO

Twice each year Konoha held a grand fighting tournament - more often if they could manage to find a good excuse for it.

In all honesty the practice almost certainly shared a lot of common heritage with the chunin exams from the mainline, but while a diplomat like Hashirama Senju would have disguised the intent better, here the reason behind it was transparent and everyone knew what was really going on.

It was item one in that Uchiha best seller, 'How To Feed Your Sharingan' was 'Watch other people fighting'.

They called it a promotion exam, but that was hogwash. Konoha had a very rigid command structure. There was not a single Uchiha with an active Sharingan who held less rank than chunin, and not since the First Shinobi War had any non-Uchiha been promoted to jonin. It was rare for members of the other clans to even reach chunin, to the point where they'd been informally known as 'the genin clans' for quite a while now, since the Second Shinobi War at least.

So the Uchiha were always in charge, just like the Uchiha and their always-Uchiha Hokages were certain that nature had intended.

Besides, their bloodline about which they were so proud had as its key, longest lasting and most famous aspect: theft, both of jutsu and other techniques. Why *wouldn't* they feel entitled to anything and everything around them? They were literally born to be thieves, to absorb the work of others and make the rewards of that effort their own - and do so over the subject of that theft's most strenuous objections.

No, you'd have to be crazy to assume that wouldn't affect their personalities.

Jared was learning all of this because the adults were chattering about it. He sat at the feet of the moms of the kids, playing with the chakra in the embers of a campfire while listening to them talk, picking up valuable local information while doing so. That he could do both when both required concentration as he was still learning the dialect was new and welcome.

The littlest superspy sighed and shook his little head. ~One rule that proved true it seemed no matter what universe was that: once you put bastards in charge, they do not relinquish control easily. Also, horrible people in charge tended, almost without exception, to use their power for horrible things.~

Also, it was scriptural that "When the wicked rule, the people mourn."

On the plus side, Ameko's scroll of Nara techniques had been very enlightening. It was in part thanks to them that he could concentrate on two tasks at once now.

You'd think the starting scrolls for a Nara would have described the basics for their infamous shadow jutsu - but if you'd thought that, you'd have been wrong. No, first and foremost, what the Nara clan techniques specialized in was having an absolutely phenomenal memory.

Memory for all kinds of things. Facts, figures, dates, what the sunlight felt like on your face or certain poisons smelled like, and so on, including muscle memory.

It turns out the Nara family reputation as geniuses was almost wholly related to their family jutsu, not their raw intellect. Oh, they were smart, there was no denying that. But thanks to these techniques they each came off and operated as if a great deal smarter than they actually were.

For instance, as geniuses the Nara had something of a reputation for predicting what their enemies would do. Well, that's not nearly so hard to do when you can remember precisely, in detailed clarity, what similar people have done in similar situations before.

There are only so many good options, odds are he'll take one of them. And the more you know about a specific person, the more accurate your guess about which he'd pick.

And as for one of their greater 'leaps of genius' - being able to calculate the exact distance they can get with their shadows. Well, it sounds a lot less impressive when you realize that one of the Nara techniques made one a lightning calculator, granting an amazing ability to run math problems in their head effortlessly in seemingly no time at all. Then their phenomenal memory let them recall basic surveyor's equations and turned it into a simple math problem "from this known distance, calculate that unknown one, then these angles, etc." - and those they could solve with ease.

It sounded a great deal less mystical when you knew how they were doing it, but once they had achieved a certain mastery of the Nara mental techniques, all they were doing was running calculations, although their ability to do so rivaled computers in some ways.

So when they were doing feats like codebreaking, estimating enemy strength and distance of their techniques, all they were doing was remembering observed facts and doing math. Sure, it made them look like geniuses, and they were, but there was also some tricks to it.

"Ok, I know my thumb is so long. And I know from standing next to you in the earlier stages of this chunin exam how tall you are. Comparing how long my thumb is to how tall you look standing over there, I can work some math and know exactly the distance between us."

Or, when the US was doing the first nuclear testing, some scientists stood at what they felt was a safe distance to observe the blast. One of those scientists dribbled sand from out of his fingers as the blast pressure wave passed, and based on the angle of descent of how the shock wave pushed the sand he was dribbling, and how far he knew himself to be from the explosion, he did an on the spot estimate of the power of that explosion that proved to be surprisingly accurate when compared with what the lab techs produced based on the measurements of their scientific instruments - and the Nara techniques did something similar. Observe leaf detritus or dust or volume of earth or water displaced in the wake of an enemy jutsu to estimate the power of those techniques. Watch him fight for a moment using similar measurements to get a good idea of his arm strength and leap distances.

Like that.

They were smart, but feats like those made them look positively brilliant.

The Nara had also (rather wisely, in Jared's opinion) integrated the special Yamanaka jutsu for resisting interrogation into their memory technique, so their clan more than most were almost impervious to torture, as almost everything they remembered they did so using the family techniques, and those were screened under the Yamanaka 'anti-interrogation' jutsu. So while they may know a lot, even if you capture one you'll never get it out of him.

Which meant it was pointless to try, so few did, making the Nara clan safer. Genius.

So it was no mystery to Jared now why, in the mainline, it was the Nara clan head who was Jonin Commander for Konoha. No one else could remember the details of who was where, doing what, or why so easily. And no one else would be so secure against interrogation.

No, given how well suited the Nara were to desk work, it was a wonder why they had anyone else running the village administration. Well, no. Ok, that wasn't a question at all. People had a remarkable tendency to grow corrupt when trusted with power, so it was probably a good thing that every desk-monkey in the Hokage's tower wasn't a Nara by default, as running the entire infrastructure would effectively hand them all power, and no one would be able to resist the temptation to cheat the system in your favor forever.

Regardless, Jared now knew EXACTLY how Shikamaru could get away with being such a lazy bum in the show! In the Nara family jutsu were techniques for listening with half an ear or even while asleep, and yet repeating sounds you'd heard verbatim. So it was possible to sleep through class and remember the entire lecture later when you needed it. They could also read through the textbooks once, then recall them forever. So it was no wonder why the poor lad was always acting so bored with his classes in the show!

Also, while the Nara were lazy, they were geniuses, so they had improved upon the Senju techniques for developing and retaining muscle tone and general fitness. Well, when most would say 'improved' they would mean, MORE strength! More power! etc, but don't forget the Nara are LAZY geniuses. Their improvements went along the lines of efficiency. So it took less effort to build up your level of fitness, and as far as retaining it? Well, at a sufficient level of mastery of these Nara techniques you'd never lose muscle tone, well, ever really. So that totally explained how Shikamaru was able to get away with watching clouds all day and having all of the bright energy of a bowl of pudding, yet still, when the situation called for it, having amazing speed capable of impressing ninja who trained all day.

He could probably have rivaled Gai or Lee, only that would have been too troublesome.

It took quite a chunk of work to fully master the modified Senju stuff to where you would never have to work out again yet still retain your full muscle tone and flexibility. Not even most Nara got that good at it. Yet, in the economy of Shikamaru, Jared could see the lazy guy concluding that a lifetime of exercise, even reduced exercise, would in the end count for a lot more effort than mastering a single technique. And to further sweeten the pot, the work to master the modified Senju stuff was all internal chakra stuff, so almost purely mental.

Only, the more physical prowess you wanted to retain, the harder those techniques were to master. So Jared could see where the Shikamaru of the show did some math, calculating precisely how much fitness he felt he'd needed to be the type of ninja he'd wanted (which was to be an average ninja facing only modest danger), then mastering the modified Senju stuff to precisely that level.

If you were a genius calculating exactly how lazy you could be, it made total sense.

It also made total sense why Shikamaru had focused almost entirely on speed, as you paid for retaining each type of physical capacity separately when mastering the modified Senju technique. Raw strength was useful mostly for hitting people or lugging heavy things about (neither of which Shikamaru wanted to do) while endurance just meant having to work longer when people learned you could handle it, which also did not appeal to the lazy genius.

Speed, on the other hand? Speed meant getting out of the way when enemy ninja were flinging nasty things at you. Speed meant dodging and not being caught in chases and so living long enough to retire. So of course Shikamaru had piled on the speed.

His speed was for emergency purposes only, since he had practically no endurance. But the pineapple headed couch potato had planned out an entire ninja career that probably would have worked if it had not been interrupted by world shaking catastrophes and epic battles. And you can't blame the guy for trying.

It naturally went without saying that Jared was already working in secret to begin mastery of these special Nara techniques himself, from the phenomenal memory and lightning calculator on, and would likely show a little more ambition than Shikamaru had with the modified Senju stuff, going for more physical power. But then unlike Shikamaru, who had planned for a short and average career, then a long and peaceful retirement (possibly the most sane ambition of any character in the show) the superspy had the advantage of knowing ahead of time that he was never sent to a world unless that world was on a path to imminent destruction.

So epic fights lay ahead as he tried to put a stop to that.

Already having learned and mastered the basic memory techniques taught to all ninja, Jared had of course committed the Nara scrolls to memory the very first time he'd viewed them, as he knew he might not ever get a second chance. Sitting at the feet of his mother, trying those techniques out, however, he was finding after so long playing with elemental natured chakras, that playing with the plain stuff again just felt a little odd. Oh, he could do it, it just felt a little weird.

A bit like speaking in an accent you haven't used for a while.

From this Jared suffered a bolt of inspiration, beginning to understand that learning a chakra affinity had a lot in common with learning a language. And the more he thought about it, the more similarities he saw. The one you pick up in your youth is your native affinity, just like the language you learn when you are small is your native tongue. Most people only have one of either, and picking up an extra affinity or language represents a lot of work once you've grown older.

And without a LOT of extra work, a secondary affinity, just like a second language, is never going to come as easily, feel as natural, or have the same versatility as your native one.

But the minds of babies are perfectly suited toward learning languages and, he was finding, chakra affinities. Also, just like people raised in a bilingual environment had two languages, with the right exposure to chakra when you are small, more than one can be native affinities.

Jared was currently working on nine elemental chakra affinities, although four of those were so clunky he was not sure if he should count them or not. But once again he was finding that, like with languages, the more you knew the easier it was to learn more. The brain (or chakra network in this case) just becomes better at learning them.

Part of that was environment. Just as a family of English speakers are liable to raise English speaking children, a clan of fire users was liable to raise children with a fire affinity - unless something happened where the clan got destroyed, in which case that child would change growing environments and might develop something else, lightning for example. Just like documented cases where a Chinese speaking child got adopted and forgot that it ever knew Chinese, speaking instead an entirely different tongue.

But that also highlighted that fluency could be lost through disuse.

Which put Jared in a bit of a pickle. Chakra was shaping up to be his special thing, his one advantage in a very hostile world, and where in the mainline people understood about chakra training and it was well accepted and widespread, they probably had tricks for retaining chakra ability just like the Senju had developed ones to retain physical ability. Only here, if those existed, Jared had no way to find them.

As the Nara would put it: Troublesome.

His mom's scrolls just contained the Mind Body Switch jutsu, and some tips on how to read a person's emotions by body language. Almost a disappointment in comparison.

As his mom gossiped with the other parents over who was going to be in this tournament, Jared sent waves of water chakra about the fake hospital a couple hundred yards distant. It was a new challenge, but he was working on range, as well as control. He had little slugs of water crawling over the inside walls over there collecting cobwebs, as he had an idea on how to use them.

Back during World War II the United States had housewives collecting all of the cobwebs they could find, then sending those in to the War Department, which had them cleaned and spun into threads. Because certain things needed silk, like parachute cords, and the country just happened to be at war with all of the major silk producing territories at the time. So they used spiderwebs as a substitute.

Jared was curious if he could do the same.

Konoha actually had a rather large silk industry, especially for its size. But no one puts costly and easily stained fabric into the hands of infants if they can help it. And his family all wore much cheaper fabrics. It was the Uchiha who got silk robes. So, if Jared wanted any silk to play around with and study, it was time to collect his own.

His water slugs would be dusting at the same time as collecting those cobwebs, but he'd already done that job using wind chakra, and collected all of the dust into a little pile before him. As the littlest superspy had observed before, his breath and bodily waste were full of his own chakra. So what about his skin or hair? While they were attached to his body, that answer was an obvious 'yes!' However, dust in homes contains dander, hair, and dead skin cells, so he was curious if he could develop a minor dust affinity by channeling chakra into his skin while exfoliating himself (with a pumice stone?) so the resulting dust would be full of his chakra and easier to manipulate.

So far no success. If it had worked, dust would have been his tenth elemental affinity, but so far his own chakra-filled skin cells just felt like and responded like earth chakra to his senses, so he'd begun gathering dust from the entire hospital to experiment on. He was in the midst of doing chakra control exercises with dust bunnies, lint, and soot without any clue how you were supposed to use this to disintegrate stuff, when the gossiping parents said something that caught his attention.

It was about the tournament, which until now the child had been rather carelessly just tossing in the mental slot of 'chunin exam', only without any allied villages because as near as the little spy could tell, Konoha had no allies.

Only their latest statement made that impossible.

Apparently, this was not like the relatively mild and inoffensive chunin exams, as he'd been assuming, and more like a Roman gladiatorial event. Death was not a regrettable byproduct of the fighting, with measures put in place to minimize the danger - it was the whole point.

Actually, as far as the superspy could tell from what he was overhearing this world did not hold mixed village chunin exams, and even if they did Konoha would not be invited. That last was perfectly understandable, as it made no sense to invite a family of jutsu thieves to watch your best genin perform their techniques.

But that was exactly why the Uchiha wanted to watch tournaments, so they could steal some good techniques. Back in the days of their power when Konoha briefly ruled the ninja world they had drafted top fighters from all of the ninja clans in the Elemental Countries and made them fight to the death to be sure they were not holding anything back.

Nowadays, things were not so grand from an Uchiha perspective.

They got everyone involved whom they could possibly beg, bribe or steal to attend, then threw them in the ring so the Uchiha could watch and gain more power. But it wasn't much. From what Jared was overhearing the first few events were just a few of the top soldiers from Konoha demonstrating their skills. Most of the show was the various Uchiha taking the floor to demonstrate techniques they'd duplicated in previous years. The actual fighting began with a selection of bribed bandits. When they were very, very lucky they got some missing nin from another village, but that happened rarely.

It is said that back during the height of their power, the Uchiha clan had managed to collect over a hundred combat styles, and more than a thousand ninja techniques. But they had been careless. They hadn't shared them around, so not all Uchiha knew their stolen styles and jutsu. Then the wars came, and Uchiha died, and knowledge perished with them.

That had happened during each of their wars, and after so many reversals and so great a loss, both of members and jutsu, the Uchiha were very systematic now in how they went about doing important things like retaining their clan's arsenal of stolen techniques.

The tournaments all started with a secret ceremony, with only Uchiha involved, where all Uchiha above a certain age who had not yet activated their Sharingan participated. Nobody outside of the Uchiha clan knew precisely what went on, but those Uchiha either emerged with an active Sharingan or died, and those that died were never spoken of again.

As Jared began to understand the rest of the schedule, the first week of the tournament was very poorly attended, and devoted to simple demonstrations by soldiers going through the common weapon forms and unarmed katas, showing off everything they knew, every punch, block, kick or maneuver, just like they were running through drills on the practice fields.

Supposedly it was some kind of honor to the soldiers invited to do this, recognizing their great skill and ability at kunai throwing, or spear katas, whatever it was they were invited to do. But then medieval nobles often considered they were doing an honor to the peasant girls they raped, and the feelings invoked by both events were much the same.

Completely unlike what the author of the Naruto series had tried to portray later in the show, running an active Sharingan took a tremendous toll on the user's chakra. No Uchiha yet had managed to run it for two hours straight, although many had dropped dead trying. The record for longest activation to date was one hundred minutes, and that was by Uchiha who were at rest, doing nothing else, conserving their energies and using no other chakra at all, and still they'd died from the drain of it.

An individual Uchiha's strength didn't affect this. Small or great chakra reserves didn't seem to make the least difference. It was, as far as anyone could tell, a hard limit that had never been broken.

Consequently, each event in this tournament was timed to be precisely fifty minutes long with ample rest breaks in between for the Uchiha watching to replenish their chakra. Three events per day was standard, and even then Uchiha had trouble regenerating enough chakra to watch every part, so most skipped entire events.

This was standard and understood. The Sharingan was perfect, after all, and did not need to see or record the same thing more than once.

Second week of the tournament was much the same as the first, only it was Uchiha doing demonstrations of dead fighting styles, copied long ago, but otherwise unknown to Konoha. They didn't bother teaching these to any non-Uchiha, so the only way they existed was being passed on like this, one person who'd recorded the techniques performing them so another generation of Uchiha could watch and copy.

This too, was very poorly attended - although seeing it once was mandatory. The Uchiha clan had lost so much when members died unexpectedly during previous wars, taking the only copies of precious secrets with them, they were not about to mildly accept the loss of so much of their copied knowledge again so easily and were now quite diligent in making sure every Uchiha mastered everything so no matter what, even if only a single Uchiha with a Sharingan survived, they would still have all of their copied knowledge.

They had learned from previous times, and would not meekly accept the loss of power again.

And make no mistake, ninjutsu and fighting techniques were power.

Third week was the same thing, but with ninjutsu, Uchiha showing off every type of chakra technique ever copied by the clan that they still retained. To the Uchiha this was perhaps the most important week of all, even though they only ever had to watch it once. This was because once chakra techniques were copied, they could be reproduced by an activated Sharingan regardless of chakra control, imposing the pre-recorded chakra patterns onto the chakra they were trying to form and bypassing the most important restriction of this world, and it seemed to work regardless of affinity. So all the Uchiha had to do was form enough energy for the jutsu to function. Their Sharingan did the rest.

In other words, every Uchiha above a certain age could use copied chakra techniques.

This did a whole heck of a lot to reinforce the "we're better then everyone else" image the Uchiha cherished most about themselves, and a major part of their grudge against the world lay in the fact that they had fallen from their rumored height of a thousand techniques on down to merely a hundred or so.

The Uchiha burned with resentment over being brought so low. But they made certain to faithfully pass on every jutsu to new generations of Uchiha, lest they fall any lower.

After three poorly attended weeks watched mostly by young Uchiha with newly activated Sharingans, it was the fourth week that drew virtually universal attendance. This was the live fighting event where captured bandits, bribed soldiers, and anyone the Uchiha could catch and throw in the ring were forced to fight to the death.

It was also a major reason why Konoha remained a very unpopular village to this day, as in the weeks and months ahead of each tournament the Hokage sent his ninja out to scour the countryside in all directions, hoping to kidnap foreign ninja for his tournament.

Aside from the Uchiha, these tournaments were not any more popular with the people in Konoha than they were with their neighboring countries whose ninja got kidnapped to fight and die in them, because every tournament two members of each of the 'genin clans' were thrown in the arena to fight and die along with everyone else - just to make sure they were not holding any skills back from their Uchiha masters.

But something the Uchiha had never discovered was that killing people because they *might* be holding out secrets from you, seriously causes them to want to hold secrets back from you.

One of these was that every soldier in Konoha, from the lowest to the highest (so long as you did not include the Uchiha) did their best to mess up those demonstrations.

"Put some rocks in your shoes," one would say, not huge stones, just enough to mess up the stances taken and make footwork awkward. "Stretch out those shoulders too far in the days before, so your arm work is nice and stiff" was another. Ramming your fingers with a hammer a few times before each match so your finger work was poor and sloppy... just as slaves have *always* learned to hold back on their masters, the residents of Konoha went to great lengths to ensure that whatever the Uchiha copied from them was as low quality as possible, just out of sheer cussedness.

If these people were going to die in the tournaments anyway, there was a substantial urge to make as certain as you could that nothing your slave drivers stole from you was going to do them any good.

After all, when war came the Uchiha lived or died by the skills they copied during these events. So if you were going to die for their entertainment anyway, the best way to make sure you were going to get some posthumous revenge on your oppressors was to make absolutely certain that the skills they copied from you were going to get him killed if he ever had to rely on them in combat.

For generations now every Uchiha had been leaning heavily to the left when they stabbed forward, and they were not even aware of it.

There are CONSEQUENCES to treating everyone like dirt and acting all superior to them!

"Grease your palms and use weapons that are too heavy for you, so your grip will be all wrong." "Fill all of the pockets on your left side with heavy weights, so your balance will be off and movement awkward." "Always trade your favorite weapon for an unfamiliar one just before a match." These and more got used, as the lengths people went to in order to teach lousy skills to their Uchiha masters were quite stunning. Special kunai even got minted that looked ordinary but were half lead on one side, so if you knew how to throw them you could always aim off-center and still hit your target - but anyone who copied your throwing method but was not using those weapons will always miss.

Going to those final fights really, Really drunk was also tremendously popular.

And if an Uchiha ever noticed how clumsy these soldiers were, they merely assumed that it was their own natural superiority making these buffoons look so inept by comparison.

Pride has always been a weakness, and a big one. And there is no faster way to reach really stupid levels of pride than to teach your children they are better than everyone else because of the family they were born in.

But the Uchiha were glad to do it.

And the comment that had stopped the superspy's play in its tracks was that this year, one of those people selected to fight and die was Jared's father, Koji Yamanaka.

OoOoO

Apparently it was more than just gossip, as the tournament started the next morning.

Jared was not prepared to wake up to the sounds of his father saying his final goodbyes to his mother. Nor, for that matter, was he prepared to sit idle about it. The little six month old spy padded outside on tiny feet to find six men, two from each of the Ino-Shika-Cho clans, all prepared with sadness in their gazes and bags over their shoulders as they met in the early pre-dawn hours to take their final walk to Konoha.

The tiny tot joined them just as his father met up with the other five. "Papa!" the boy cried, desperate to get his father's attention before the much longer-legged men started off, as he didn't think he could match pace with them.

The hard look on Koji Yamanaka's face softened but became no less sad as he turned and beheld his son waddling out to join them. Putting down his bag for a brief second, he obliged his running toddler with a hug, then, wiping a tear from out of his eye, he said, "Alright son, your father has to go away now. You take good care of your mother, you hear?"

Jared nodded up at his father, only he had a scowl on his face seeing he would not be listened to. Instead, he just skipped words, and went straight into action. Using magnetic chakra he drew his father's tanto, an old relic not all that high quality and taken as booty in some past war, but at least it had a full tang.

With the exposed blade hovering before him, Jared then used the most difficult exercise of his wind chakra so far and cut the blade off right at the hilt.

"What?! SON!" his father protested, only Jared wasn't finished. Without pausing for explanation the boy's wind chakra unwrapped the bindings and disassembled the hilt, discarding the full tang he then reassembled the dagger with only a tiny smidgen of blade trapped in the wood of the hilt.

It was now an actor's prop, not a real weapon.

Jared's water chakra brought over a wooden shingle that had fallen off the roof, and held it against his stomach as he grabbed a stick and met his father's eyes. "First, you will take a board like this one. Then, you will attach to it a piece of leather." Not bothering to ask, the boy's wind chakra cut a man's bag in half and brought over one of the two strips of leather left of it. "Leave enough room inside so it bulges. Let yourself look pudgy, this isn't about pride." The section of bag secured to the board now filled with about an inch thick layer of water, which looked rather pudgy on a body already covered with baby fat. "Then cover it with your shirt." Jared did so, slipping the board, plus leather and water under his baby shirt, which now hung a little less loosely. "Use straps to hold it in place so it does not wiggle."

He met his father's stunned eyes stoically. "There is no man or bloodline that can tell a man's blood from animal blood just by looking at it from over a hundred feet away. So fill the cavity in your board with blood and guts from a sheep or a pig or something. Remember to seal it well with wax or something so it does not leak and give you away."

Jared had seen, briefly, the stadium they were going to use, and while not as grand or as tall it was based on the one they'd held the chunin exams in. The audience would be at least a hundred feet above the action - probably to put them outside of jutsu range.

Still levitating his father's now broken knife, that looked okay but could not withstand even the slightest use in combat, Jared adjusted his magnetic chakra and brought the point of the former weapon around to face his gut.

"You will, if possible, arrange to fight other members of the clans, people you trust, as early in the event as possible. You will bring your arm high, as if to strike his head," Jared demonstrated with the hand holding his stick, posing as if he was going for another child just the same size as he and right in front of him. "Instead, he will grab your hand, and strike you in the gut."

The tanto lunged forward, piercing the child's shirt, and from the way it sank in and water gushed out Jared's father actually spent a moment in terror that the lad had killed himself. The other fathers were no better, reacting with shock to the last of them.

"Blood and animal guts will spill out," Jared instructed, just as though it hadn't looked like he'd just stabbed himself so deep the point of the blade ought to be emerging from his tiny body's other side. "But only a trained medic could tell the difference between human and animal intestines, so long as you use something of similar size like dog or sheep or pig, and then only from a few feet away."

The boy straightened up so he stood tall once again, well, as tall as any six month old could be. He lifted his shirt while meeting his father's eyes to show that the tanto blade had punched through the cloth and leather to lodge in the wood. "On a straight, forward thrust the blade of this modified tanto will actually sink about five inches into its own empty hilt, making it look like you have punched the blade about six inches deep into your opponent, once the inch of false blood bag is accounted for. And the wooden backing catches the tip to stop any real injury from occurring."

He dropped his torn up shirt back into place and removed the tanto, starting to fix it so the trick blade was reset in the pre-stab position. "Gut injuries can take hours or days for the victim to die. So curl up around the injury and fall. Pretend shock, and so long as clansmen or other people who can be trusted remove the bodies between fights, you can fake your own death without using any chakra at all - just a few willing helpers and a trick blade."

All six men were now staring at the boy in shock.

Jared blinked, realizing he'd just provided one solution to six doomed men, and they could not all fake their own deaths the same way. That would be too suspicious. So he went on without pause, holding the now-reassembled fake tanto across his belly miming a slash. "The same trick can be applied as a horizontal slash with a real weapon. The bag will be cut open and fake guts spill out, but the different application makes it look like a very different kind of end to a combat, as the whole lead-up can be staged differently. Another man can hide a blood bag without guts in his armpit and be stabbed with another false blade. It will look as though the weapon went straight through the ribcage and into the heart. Another man can hide the blood bag around his groin. Kick high and let your partner slash or stab there, and it will look like a vital shot. Just be careful not to hit anything real when you do it. Holding a mouthful of blood and never saying anything while breathing through your nose can let you release the blood just after your organs would have been ruptured if it was a real hit, adding to the strength of the illusion."

Okay, that was four options for faking deaths among six men. Jared grimaced, because he had some bad news. "All of these require the cooperation of your opponent. So it must be done when you are fighting each other. Arrange this however possible."

One of the Nara men caught Jared's eyes and nodded seriously, so the child considered that dealt with. "There are many poisons that, with the right dosage, simulate death. Use one to scratch your partner in a fight, then claim it was a lethal dose, possibly of some other venom."

Heck, this was the orient. Opium poppies grew naturally here, and were more common than roses. He KNEW the proper poisons were available!

Another nod. Alright, now for some bad news. Jared closed his eyes and sighed. "Faking your death against an opponent not in on the act is much more difficult. So unless you can pull off a mutual take-down in the poison fight, one of you will have to fight someone out to actually kill you. So fight a fire user if you can, and right before an event, take the body of a bandit and dress him in a copy of your own clothes. It must be as fresh as possible. Bury the body under an inch or so of soil and conceal even that under bushes or other light cover at the side of the arena, then give it a stick of bamboo as if to breathe through. Make certain you know the location well. Then, during combat when the enemy obscures you from view with a wide-area jutsu, use Replacement to switch out with the body you have prepared. Hide under that soil under cover breathing through that tube. Have someone else pretend a grudge against you before that fight and bribe that foe ahead of time to burn your body to complete unrecognizability - even drop a hint that you sprained something and so could never dodge a wide area fire attack. Properly burned, a bandit body will be impossible to tell from your own, especially if they are wearing the same clothes."

Jared looked up at his father, tears flowing from his eyes. "You will never be able to show your faces in Konoha again after faking your deaths. But we need you at this fake hospital anyway. And so long as you don't use chakra where they can see it, you should be able to get away fine."

Jared choked, wiping tears from his eyes. "And if you remember nothing else about herbal medicine, remember this: pepper stops bleeding, often by the count of three."

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

I was actually going to kill off some of these characters. Now I feel guilty about it.

Anyway, basic stage magic can do a lot of good when your enemies (in this case the Uchiha watching in the audience) are looking for chakra. But Jared is very well aware that success is definitely not guaranteed.

And the bit about pepper is correct. Put it in some water and drink it for internal bleeding, otherwise just sprinkle the wounds. Any kind of pepper will do. Cayenne is best, and the hotter the better, but ordinary table pepper will still do the trick.


	6. Chapter 6

Whirlpool Sky  
by Skysaber

Chapter Six

OoOoO

"Dun dun! Dun dun dun dun!" whistle whistle...

Jared had the Mission Impossible theme running through his head as he crawled down a vertical air shaft barely bigger than he was. An interesting thing about the shinobi lifestyle was it conditioned one to accept the impossible as routine. Even if you'd never run across a certain impossible thing before, seeing it happen shook you less, since you have already accepted, done even, so many impossible things before.

The clan elders had been there inside an hour and checked him thoroughly, yet after another mind-walk found nothing more interesting than before. So what he'd done about preparing men to fake their deaths was viewed as just another weirdly-accepted normal. He'd acted enough like a baby before and after that now there was talk of maybe him being in contact with ancestor spirits or something, but that was all.

No, the first thing that occurred after being given a clean bill of mental health was his clan head assigning him a dangerous mission.

Hence the crawling down air ducts.

In fact, he could pretend he was hearing an Impossible Mission briefing now. The man would pull out a series of photographs, starting with a building, and the recording would say, "This building is the Konoha Archives, access is to Uchiha and clan heads only. Outside, there is nothing to distinguish it from dozens of other buildings throughout Konoha, but inside is a secret passage to an underground vault whose walls are five feet thick and made of a chakra-resistant material."

The recording would go on to say, "The archive was created as the excuse behind a grab for more power in the early days of Konoha, and continues as a tradition today. Claiming fear of thieves and infiltrators, the Uchiha enacted a ban on all written material within Konoha as a security concern, forcing their servant clans to store any documents within this vault, thus placing all technique scrolls where the Uchiha had access to them. It was their intention by so doing they would learn the hidden techniques of their servant clans. However those scrolls were all encoded as part of a holdover from the Warring Clans period, so that Uchiha plan was foiled.

"Today, any scrolls kept by the genin clans are few, well-hidden, and written from memory, and even so routine searches by their overlords have kept them from building up a library. Nowadays most training scrolls are written in plain language, created only as needed and destroyed after a single use, to prevent the knowledge within from falling into the hands of the Uchiha. However, since it would be impossible for anyone but a Nara to retain full knowledge of their clan histories and techniques across generations without reference material, and since the Uchiha tightly restrict access to the official archives, this has resulted in the loss of much of the clans' effective power, weakening them and leaving the Uchiha firmly in control."

"Since the clan heads are kept busy running errands for their masters, they have little time to read, much less catalog, their own clan scrolls in the archive. So they do not even know what techniques or knowledge have been lost.

"Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to penetrate that vault and get hold of those archives so the clans who wrote them can regain much of their power and hopefully throw off the yoke of the Uchiha forever."

The recording would then end on that strangely routine, yet dire, note (adapted for local conditions), "As always, should you or any member of your IM force be caught or killed, the clans will deny any knowledge of your actions. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds."

Once the overview was done and the message destroyed, the scene would then switch to where the man was briefing his team on what they'd actually be doing, and the problems they were facing.

Jared decided to narrate this part himself as he navigated through an S-curve in a pipe that was already barely bigger than he was. "The access building is disguised as a small armory, one of several spread around Konoha, and located just off the Uchiha main practice fields. The upper floors are filled with mostly practice weapons, just valuable enough that a couple of armed guards don't stand out. However, because of its location, they've ensured there is a large body of Uchiha nearby around the clock ready to react to any emergency. Now, because of those armed guards, the Sharingan they'll be using to check any visitors, and the large response force nearby, we won't be able to challenge the main doors."

One of the team members would then ask, "So, how will we gain entrance?"

And Jared spoke once again what he thought ought to be the team lead's lines, rewording the mission briefing his clan head had given him to fit. "One universal weak point common to all bunkers or bomb shelters is this: wherever humans are they've got to breathe. Now, this culture hasn't got the technology for air scrubbers or oxygen tanks, and those are temporary measures in either case, requiring constant supply to renew or replace. No, for humans to enter the vaults and use those archives they've got to breathe, so there will be ventilation. The trouble with that is using that as an access point is an old trick. They knew of that danger and took some countermeasures."

The team lead would, at this point, have shown off a picture of the iron statue Jared had bypassed far above. "Having a pipe stick up out of the ground is too obvious. So they put up a statue of an old war hero, an Uchiha of course, as the entry point. Now it doesn't look like it, but the statue is hollow, and within the shadows of the tucks and folds of the armor and clothes are concealed dozens of little holes that allow for the passage of air, but not much else. Getting past that when the statue stands in full view of the training fields will be your first obstacle."

And it had been accomplished handily enough when an Akimichi had sat down, placing a bag full of lunch against that statue while using it as a backrest. The Uchiha couldn't react without giving away that this statue was special, so while the guards watched that guy eat a sandwich, Jared, inside that bag of lunch, had used his wind chakra to cut open an access panel in the side of the base of that statue, then crawled in.

The Akimichi had reached in his bag to close that panel behind him, then close the hole in his bag, and went on to finish his lunch.

Jared continued his muttered briefing as he squeezed around a narrow turn in the pipe. "The shaft below is your next obstacle. It is a thirty foot straight drop in a pipe too narrow to pass an adult's head. Only a baby could navigate it, but that baby would have to be able to use chakra to walk on walls or else he'd never survive the thirty foot drop."

Hence the reason why Jared got recruited for this mission.

That briefing would go on, "Now, there are several switchbacks and S-curves to follow, to stop any weapons or jutsu from getting in by preventing a straight line of effect." And Jared could attest they were narrow, as he'd barely passed them, small as he was. "Then finally you've got a set of metal bars blocking the vent as a means of preventing any nin-animals from gaining entrance."

A barrier solved once more with wind chakra used to cut those bars.

Jared breathed a lot more easily as he used magnetic chakra to slowly lower the severed metal bars to the floor, laying them to rest softly so their ringing out on impact didn't alert the guards above.

He'd have to replace those bars after he'd left, but for now he was rapidly crawling down the inside wall of the vault, feeling a touch of claustrophobia imposed by that very narrow approach retreat as he exited into the main room. "One thing working in our favor is the vault itself sees very little traffic. The reason most people learn to read and write is to record and pass on knowledge, or to pick up the wisdom and skills passed on by those who have gone before. But with an eye bloodline to do all of that for you, well, the Uchiha are not big readers. Once they failed to break the codes on the hidden technique scrolls, most of them lost all interest in going over those archives."

One thing even this imaginary briefing had not covered was that, in the absence of electric light, underground living was much more difficult. Even formed by earth chakra so the vault itself was structurally sound, it was as dark a pit as you'd ever behold down there. It made moonless nights seem positively shiny by comparison.

At least those had stars.

Reading by torchlight was never fun, and it drank down oxygen like nobody's business. Also the ventilation passage was so narrow that even with fans driving the air it would have been wholly inadequate, yet they did not possess that kind of fan on this world. Basically, once a week, if they felt like it, some Uchiha would use a wind jutsu to force some air flow to bring in some breathable air and make it slightly less stale down here. At least they had both an intake and an outtake ventilation passage, though both were much the same.

But luckily Jared was a child, and with his small body size did not need much air. He was also rather good at air chakra, so established a small, barely noticeable breeze from above to keep him supplied.

Light, on the other hand, he brought with him. The light bulbs he'd brought flared to life, showing more brightness to that chamber than it had seen since its construction.

He'd brought spares as he didn't want one to break.

Now, all kidding about an Impossible Mission briefing aside, his clan head had only sent Jared down here after a single technique off a single scroll, one Inoichi knew they needed, but it was complicated and he'd not had the time free to memorize it, nor had he ability to smuggle a copy out. They practically made the clan heads strip naked to come in here, then searched them rigorously on the way out, just to discourage visits.

That, and some of the Uchiha were gay, so they liked fondling man bits. Itachi's purple nailpolish hadn't come out of nowhere. There was a reason why it was left to Sasuke to replenish the clan in the mainline.

Too bad he turned out to be so much of a disappointment in that department.

Jared's instructions had been rigorous. So many steps forward, so many shelves high, and so many scrolls across he was to find a scroll of a certain description from which he was to copy a section from a certain header to another quite specific header - and Inoichi had made him recite back every part of these instructions three times right before heading out.

A small pack of paper, ink and brushes had been dragged behind him through that tunnel. They'd also given him a timer, in this case a candle, that he was to light the moment he got down inside, and when it had burned out he was to go up the route he had come in, taking his copied section of scroll along with him by the same 'pack trailing on a cord' trick.

Seeing as how no daylight penetrated this place, and there were no clocks or hourglasses inside, a timer was necessary, and he lit it immediately, just as instructed.

It was a twenty-four hour candle. As far as anyone knew Jared was illiterate, aside from a few lessons on how to copy kanji given just before this mission commenced. So he was supposed to do the medieval scribe trick of just copying the text without being able to understand the characters, and they'd given him plenty of time to help him get it right.

That, and it was difficult to visit a sensitive location too often without drawing suspicion. An Akimichi having lunch in the same spot two days in a row should manage to skate below the radar, but two visits in one day would be pushing it.

As it was, the mission was expected to be just at the limits of the little boy's endurance, as he would be going hungry that full 24 hours. And frankly, Jared judged that his clan head was desperate, as this mission was shaky enough on enough counts to be verging on a suicide mission or a forlorn hope, something like a last, desperate gamble, more than a mission with an honest chance for success.

If he hadn't been so honestly desperate to get that bit of scroll copied, the littlest superspy might have suspected his clan head of trying to get rid of him on a one-way trip. Instead, what he actually thought was Inoichi was desperately seeking hope and willing to gamble at long odds rather than meekly accepting a destruction that Jared couldn't see.

But whatever. Jared was in. He'd first find and copy that scroll bit, then it would be time to read.

OoOoO

Jared squirmed up the ventilation pipe as silently as he could, his head feeling stuffed to the point of bursting with information. Some would call it useless information, because all of the good stuff had been encoded, but to a good superspy there is no such thing as useless.

The archives contained scrolls from every clan that had ever willingly joined Konoha, so the Uchiha, Yamanaka, Nara, Akimichi, even dusty piles of old scrolls left over from extinct clans like the Inuzuka and Sarutobi. And there were probably more clans as yet undiscovered by his distinctly hasty search.

Twenty four hours was a small time to catalog so rich a library - especially when it seemed no one else had ever been inclined to.

All sorts of stuff had been there to read: clan histories of past events, family records of who married whom so you knew who was related and how, even seemingly useless stuff like children's stories meant to be told to the clan youth.

Although those childrens' stories had been interesting. From what admittedly little he'd read of them thus far they all seemed to be basic primers on when and how best to use the clan techniques, what opportunities were suited to them, and what not to do.

The actual mechanics of how to perform the techniques, the handseals and stuff that would teach you how to learn it, were carefully excluded from those childrens' tales. But there was a wealth of data on additional applications, clever tricks that had been worked out by clan members over the years, then converted to children's tales so new generations would grow up learning them, so their use of those techniques would be more flexible.

Come to think of it, those stories his mom had been reciting to him at bedtime now took on a whole new meaning. Who knew the Yamanaka had started out as infiltration specialists? From what he'd seen in the series, the only uses for Mind-Body Switch were all combat related. But now that it came up, sneaking into an enemy camp wearing the body of one of their actual members would be a devastating infiltration maneuver.

One such agent could work a vast amount of destruction by poisoning or sabotage, or even assassination. But potentially even more devastating was the information they could learn about their enemies, and they could leave without a trace just by canceling the technique!

Even if they got discovered, if the body they were in was killed, what did they care? Their spirit would be free, floating back to their own body just as though the jutsu had released.

No wonder his clan studied body language and mannerisms so much. They were training to be consummate actors! Wearing an authentic body would only help you so much to get past their gate guard if you didn't also move and act and speak like one of the people you were infiltrating.

Well, that was one mystery out of the way now.

Jared resolved if he had the chance to find out more of each clan's childrens' stories. For his own clan it could teach him the best uses for the stuff once he'd finally got it mastered, and for other clans, well, knowing what they could do would tell him what to expect from them.

Ahhh! Now he knew what was going on when his mom tried to encourage him to "Look at how daddy/mommy/that little girl are moving. Do you think you could move like them?" He'd blown her off, thinking the way he moved was just fine for him, but that wasn't what she was after at all! His mom wasn't criticizing the way *he* moved, she was trying to train him to observe and mimic other people as a way to get maximal use out of the clan jutsu!

Come to think of it, one of the Nara scrolls suggested their children play 'Shadow Tag' where the only way to win was to catch one another using their shadows. They didn't even have to know the technique, just getting another child in your shadow was enough, and if that didn't have obvious combat implications for them later in life he didn't know what did.

So the little superspy wriggled along the pipes quite content in the knowledge he had secured, just out of reading the unencoded stuff.

Only the most important part of any clan's archives were encoded. Written forms of Japanese were already hard enough large blocks of Japanese education on up through high school was devoted just to building up the students' numbers of symbols recognized.

That was something pointed out on an archeology show Jared had watched, where the presenter had explained something that anthropologists had known to be true since forever - that the Alphabet was actually one of the world's greatest inventions.

You see, in societies with symbol based languages using characters for words, like pictographs or kanji, although in his case the archeology presenter had used heiroglyphs as his example because he was in Egypt at the time, it takes so much time to learn how to read fluently (over a decade in most cases) because there are literally tens of thousands or even millions of symbols you've got to commit to memory. There's no logical structure or rules to make it easy, just 'this symbol means this word, except in these cases where it means that word'.

Rote memorization over a bare minimum of twenty to forty thousand individual characters just to get by - more than a hundred times that to be fully literate.

What this does is it puts reading solely into the hands of the upper crust, the aristocracy or priesthoods, because those are the only people who can afford to take that amount of time off working for a living to learn how to do it. And that means that maybe one percent of your people know how to read - if you are lucky!

And without reading, getting a meaningful education becomes very, very difficult.

But the reason the modern world BECAME the modern world was that society learned that culture as a whole reaps enormous benefits if education becomes more widespread. There are inventions made that nobody ever expected or planned for, developments in science, art and industry that an illiterate people just can't make.

The alphabet, with it's simple 'this symbol means this sound, now build your own words' approach was totally revolutionary. Now any common person could be taught how to read using a set of symbols that could be taught in a matter of minutes.

Suddenly everybody could have education.

That particular revolution had occurred a long time ago, so it seems normal to us, but still the alphabet was one of the key building blocks without which an intellectual Renaissance, and the industrial and productive revolutions to follow, could not have happened.

Japan and China could manage the costs of educating their youths today because they basically got dragged into the prosperity and largess of the modern world by those who had achieved it first. But the experts agree that those countries never could have achieved it on their own. China, for one, had a long list of potentially historically significant inventions that failed to change their culture or society in any meaningful way.

The education base just had not been there to spark off a Renaissance, nor could it be.

So, as one of those countries that languished without an alphabet, and without the industrial wealth of modern manufacturing to compensate, in the Elemental Countries reading was a rare skill, as rare as chakra control in its own way.

Not for ninjas, of course. The Yamanaka and Nara families had always had techniques they'd worked out together for absorbing and retaining large blocks of information easily, and when they'd joined Konoha they'd made as one of their contributions to the new village the lesser version of that technique. Then, when Konoha got invaded and overthrown, that technique got picked from the village's carcass, and was now general among ninja everywhere.

That made reading easy among ninja, as it vastly simplified memorizing tens of thousands of kanji. So, while not as good as the Nara specialty version of those memory techniques, once that got disseminated most ninja learned how to read, as they could do it a lot faster.

Still, most of those clan scrolls pre-dated the founding of Konoha, when you couldn't afford to encode everything you wrote down, just because a reading ninja was rare enough, and you couldn't count on the rare few who not only knew that, but also your codes, surviving.

So on the one hand, you had to encode some things because you could never ensure that an enemy wouldn't get a look at your scrolls and you needed to hide your secrets, the stuff your family lived and died on.

On the other hand, you could never be certain that a decapitating strike, or just plain old bad luck, wouldn't take out all of your clan elders - the old guys who knew all of the codes. So the ninja clans were faced with two equal and opposite problems, encode the clan secrets too much and you might lose them, or on the flip side encode them too little and everyone might get them. Both tragedies had occurred to various clans, in fact the Akimichi had lost an entire set of techniques they'd owned before the current multi-size stuff got invented when they lost the people who could read those scrolls in one unlucky battle, forcing the younger generations to develop the new set out of sheer desperation.

So both were real dangers, and every clan's answer on how to split the difference between those two dangers was different.

Codes of all sorts would be used, both good and bad, because nobody was expert at all things and some would be good at creating ciphers, and other clans not. But Jared didn't know any of them, and codebreaking was an exercise that took weeks at minimum, and he was not confident of success without all sorts of modern tools and programs he didn't have.

And some of the old Japanese codes left from way back during World War II had never been broken. So he'd just read unsecured scrolls.

Jared was wriggling up the last straight shaft of the tunnel feeling proud of himself and all he'd accomplished, only to reach the entry port of the statue, and stare out of a crack in shock at the sight of the Akimichi with his lunchbag being driven off by Uchiha using fireballs.

OoOoO

Jared wriggled back into the archives chamber feeling shaky and alone. He'd stayed up at the top for what felt like several eternities, but was probably only half an hour, watching through cracks and tiny, shadowed air holes, hoping for some kind of signal or message, some indication that his family were going to reschedule a pickup.

No such thing.

He was now officially on his own, surrounded by a camp of enemies.

Fighting down a rising panic, the boy took stock of himself. He was alone in an unlit, chakra-resistant vault. He had on him only his clothes, a pack of copied notes and some writing supplies, and a short length of cord he'd used to drag them behind him through a pipe. He hadn't eaten anything in a little over 24 hours now, although thankfully this vault had a bathroom (probably so too many people weren't seen too often going in or out), so he'd at least been able to get some drinks of water from the sink. His candle was expired, but he still had lightbulbs, still had air.

Only he no longer possessed any kind of route out.

~Ok,~ the little boy sat on his diaper clad bottom and forced down the rising panic. ~The clan needs my notes. Odds are Inoichi or one of the other heads will visit this place soon, with the purpose of reconnecting with me to arrange another way out.~

Only he realized with sinking dread that he could not count on that. What if the clan heads got accompanied by Uchiha guards into the vault? Or what if visits had to be scheduled a week in advance?

He didn't know, and couldn't chance that they didn't.

The boy sat, pondering hard on his situation. ~Ok, what do we know? Consider everything from the top, starting with our enemy.~

So what did he know of the Uchiha?

Answer: Not enough. Of what little he knew from the show, most would be common knowledge here, and he needed more detail than that. So he dove into the Uchiha scrolls to find out more.

It was hours pondering everything he knew, and pouring over the Uchiha family scrolls for even more information, before he lowered a scroll in wonder having suffered his bolt of inspiration out of this new flow of information.

After reading countless clan histories, their children's stories, their games and cautions that taught them how to use the gift of their own bloodline, he understood a conclusion he had never reached before.

The Uchiha were intellectually lazy! They did not have to think hard to learn things, they just had to look at someone doing a skill and their eyes did the rest for them. Similarly, they did not have to learn how to memorize, their eyes did all of that for them.

But mental effort was like physical effort, in a way, in that the more you did the more you learned how to do, as your capacity to do the stuff increased from the effort. Short-circuiting that effort, like having your physical trainer lift all of those heavy weights and run all of your laps for you, did you no favors.

So the result of having a 'glance at it, learn it' Sharingan was the Uchiha never really had to do much thinking. The whole, entire process of "study it out in your mind, ponder it, examine the problem from as many angles as you can, probing for a solution" got short-circuited by the Sharingan doing all of the work of capturing skills for them.

And as a direct result of never having to mentally chew over any problems for themselves, they never really learned how to learn. Most people will avoid any effort they don't have to do, and mental effort was still effort. Besides, no one has infinite energy to spread around and most of the Uchiha had already quite committed their time to physical training, as one thing a Sharingan was simply unable to do was modify the bodies of those who used it.

You could stare at the fittest people in the world all day long with the highest level Sharingan and it could not make you the slightest bit faster or stronger or tougher. So if an Uchiha wanted strength, or speed, they had to train for it like anyone else. And train they did, out on the practice fields nearly every day. This made them rather the opposite of the Nara who were physically lazy but mentally willing to work quite hard.

Nor was that the only weakness. Their own clan histories and children's stories repeatedly cautioned their members that they could only copy what they could see. Something like someone's thought processes, or anything else invisible to the naked eye, were entirely safe from that bloodline. So you couldn't stare at someone to copy his thoughts. Not even the Sharingan could do that. And certain skills were virtually all in the head!

Codebreaking was one of those skills that a Sharingan was simply unable to do. Too much of the work involved thinking that they couldn't copy.

As did architectural design.

So the Uchiha had, in all probability, not designed this place themselves.

Jared began to look around his prison with new eyes, understanding at last that whatever the Uchiha's intentions with this facility, it had to have been built by someone else - some poor sod who was most likely lied to about it's purpose, then both the designer and work crew put to death to avoid sharing any of its secrets.

It was horribly cliche, but killing the work crew was sometimes done by bad people who either didn't want to pay them, or just didn't want them blabbing.

With this new understanding, the superspy looked all around him, at the scrolls and the shelves they stood on, the bathroom, and then, up above himself, at the fire sprinkler system that dangled from the ceiling.

Plumbing was something that was easy to get right even without modern industry or tools. Something like a toilet was easy to copy once you had the slightest inkling of fluid dynamics - which anyone with a water affinity could figure out with a touch of work. So he was no longer surprised by seeing nearly modern bathrooms (just lacking hot water) in a place that could otherwise have passed for the Shogunate era in many respects.

And most modern fire sprinkler systems at their heart were just a series of pipes set up connected to a water reservoir. The trigger was an easily melted plug in the sprinklers themselves. A flame breaks out, those pipes heat up, the plug melts and water flows out. Simple and very reliable. It doesn't require power or electronics of any kind.

Then Jared's eyes tracked down, because clan scrolls existed for a reason, and that reason was to pass on to future generations the clan secrets, the skills and techniques they would live or die by. But those could be destroyed as easily by water damage as they could be by fire - especially in a room that was most often lit by torches.

And there it was, a drain in the floor, covered by a simple grating not too different from the ones he had cut through on the air shaft to get in here.

A drain had to be there because no one wanted to store paper archives at the bottom of a swimming pool, which is what an underground basement vault like this one would be if ever that fire sprinkler system got activated.

And, in order to function, that drain has to go somewhere. Not only that, but it had to be able to evacuate water just as fast as the entire sprinkler system could dump it in, because if it could not keep up with that flow rate this whole room would be a swimming pool anyway.

So that drain hole had to be at least as big around as the air vents he'd crawled through to get in there, and it had to go to somewhere capable of accepting a massive inrush of water. Possibly a sewer, but anyplace outside of these chakra-resistant walls would be vulnerable to earth manipulation.

So, if the water could get out, so could he.

Probably.

Maybe.

He hoped.

He cut open the grate on the drain and made the attempt.

OoOoO

After war had destroyed its first location, the Uchiha had moved Konoha to a section of dry and unlovely mountains chiefly chosen because no one else wanted to live there.

Well, as Jared was learning, those mountains were dry not from any lack of rain (they still grew rice in paddies up there) but because they were limestone, and limestone dissolves very easily - especially where water is involved. The natural fractures and joints inherent to limestone are thus slowly enlarged, forming drains and channels for that water to escape.

The result is that, rather than holding on to water like most kinds of stone, limestone springs leaks. This leads to mazes of dissolved passageways and very often, some quite impressive cave systems.

Getting lost inside of them was guaranteed.

The only things saving Jared were that he had light, as much as he needed, could both mark the path behind him, as well as open too-narrow passages by using earth chakra, find water to drink by feeling for it with chakra, and by drawing air to himself to breathe learned how to sense for the slightest breeze, and thus lead himself to a way out.

It was still two days before he stumbled out, was found by a patrol, thankfully decreed sick instead of starving by the trio of clansmen in that patrol so the Uchiha leading them didn't want anything to do with the kid, then taken to the false hospital where his precious cargo got delivered and the boy set to work with a will draining his source of milk dry.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Merry Christmas everybody! Well, day after anyway.

One of the greatest failings of the Naruto series, some say its greatest failing by far, was the author's unwillingness to give the Sharingan any kind of failure, weakness or limitation, and stick with that for even a single instance where it ought to apply after that flaw's introduction.

Examples are too numerous and disappointing to list. The first time we see a Sharingan in the show was when Kakashi revealed his in his first fight against Zabuza, and he puts himself out of commission for a week with chakra exhaustion - which is literally the last time chakra exhaustion has any effect on any Sharingan wielder due to that supposed cost. It gets retconned and retconned until it is out of existence. People keep it constantly active for decades after that without any trouble whatsoever. Kakashi himself suffers no sign of chakra exhaustion in his second fight against Zabuza, despite by my clock that second fight taking over a hundred times as long.

Which would not be so disappointing if it did not happen Every Single Time a decent limit tried to get connected to that bloodline. "Oh, it can't copy speed." and then it copies speed. "Oh, it can't see through things" then it sees through dirt, "Oh, it can't tell a Shadow Clone apart from the real one," then Sasuke is there doing it.

Whatever we are told it can't do, it winds up doing very soon thereafter.

So, since no author can reasonably accept any story element that doesn't have limits, even in a fan work, I'll simply be enforcing the rules Bakamoto introduced, then discarded.

Here, those limits will actually be put in place. Magnekyo Sharingan drives you blind? Well, it might be claimed Kishimoto forgot that one seconds after he wrote it seeing as how Obito has been using his for decades with no trouble at all. He never even bothered to make up the flimsiest handwaving excuse, just ignored it entirely. And Itachi was "going blind" for a full decade at least, without any noticeable drop in his combat capacity.

I'm sorry, reading in a room with inadequate lighting will drive you blind faster than that. And every time Bakamoto introduces a limit, it's the same thing. He tells us it is there, then he proves it wrong the second it is inconvenient to his beloved bloodline.

No. Just, no. Here, any limit it has ever had will be in full force.

So the Sharingan drains chakra at a terrifying pace, one percent of the user's total for every minute it is active. It's supposed to be rougher on transplanted eyes? Well ok, should anyone actually manage to achieve that in this world it will drain one percent of their total chakra for every second of activation - which is in keeping with Kakashi's fight with Zabuza, where he had it active for about a minute and a half, then dropped from exhaustion.

Magnekyo drives you blind? Ok, that's one percent loss of total vision per day until you are completely, one-hundred percent blind. Takes just a little over three months.

That's inconsistent with Kishimoto's work. Well, so what? Kishimoto can't be bothered to stay consistent with Kishimoto's work. So why should anyone else feel constrained to?

If it helps you any reconcile the show to this AU, tell yourself that in the mainline the Uchiha tricked Uzumaki into inventing a boatload of seals overcoming virtually all of a Sharingan's weaknesses, and then the Uchiha applied the whole raft of these in secret to all their children before they even started attending the ninja academy. So Sasuke has them, but being secret seals they are not easily found or read. No one left even knows they are there, and the tragedy for the future of his clan is he does not know how to apply them. No one lives who does, and Konoha has been destroyed enough times since then my personal interpretation of that particular belief is that those secrets are unrecoverable, so even should the Uchiha get revived their bloodline would be worth only a fraction what everyone has grown accustomed to, since all of its glaring weaknesses would be back in full force for any of Sasuke's children.

But, obviously, none of that happened here.


End file.
